Selected Correspondence, Edited with a Biographical Essay by Ruth Bernard Yeazell Alice James, 1848-1892, was the sister of Henry and William James, as literary as her brothers bu but never formally educated. Here Yeazell argues that Alice James instead made a career of her lifelong neurastenic illness and anticipation of death. With many of the letters written from her sick bed, she is alternatively witty, lyrical and occasionally bitter, but always deeply morbid.