Alice James moved to live in England in 1885, three years after the deaths of her parents. Two of her three surviving brothers were living in the United States, and she had no particular friends waiting for her across the Atlantic – only her brother Henry, who was living the single but abundantly social life of a distinguished literary bachelor in London. As Alice describes it in her diary, ‘I crossed the water and suspended myself like an old woman of the sea round [Henry's] neck where to all appearances I shall remain for all time’ (25th March 1890, AJD 104). The diary ends two years later, with a note by Katharine Loring briefly detailing the circumstances of Alice's death – one day after Alice had dictated a correction to what would be her final entry.

Alice James was a career invalid who spent her adult life exhibiting classic manifestations of hysteria: fainting, prostration, depression, back pain, stomach pain, paralysis.