Anne Moncure Crane - Biography - Emily Chester - Crane and Henry James

Crane and Henry James

In Henry James and the 'Woman Business' (2004), writer Alfred Habegger accuses Henry James of plagiarizing Crane's novels after her death and rewriting them under his own name. He believes that a scathing anonymous obituary was in fact written by James who had every reason, he contends, to want her forgotten,

"For the unknown writer of this shockingly nasty death notice, Seemüller was a monster of such power and proportions that it was necessary, publicly, to drive a stake through her heart. It was essential that this novelist never rise again.
What better authorization would James have needed for his slightly risky enterprise of appropriating and rewriting Seemüller's novels? She was dead and buried ... It would be a civilized and responsible act to turn her shapeless and immoral narratives into a novel of rounded perfection."