Who knew the life of Henry James would be such a hot commodity in the twenty-first century? The author known for long, discursive turns of phrase seems an odd fit with an era known for acronyms and emoticons. But since 2004, at least a half-dozen novels and short stories have been centered on James’ life and work. And pity poor Michiel Heyns, whose 2004 novel about James was never published because Colm Toibin and David Lodge had beaten him to the punch.

• The Master by Colm Toibin
A subtle character study of Henry James, this novel portrays James’ attraction to men and his complicated relationships with the women in his life, but its focus is the way James used the people and events of his life to inform his art.

• Author, Author by David Lodge
This one ends where Toibin’s begins — with the greatest humiliation of James’ life, when he was booed at the London premiere of his play Guy Domville. Lodge’s book is less steeped in James’ psyche than The Master, but it provides more concrete details about his life.

• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Okay, I’m cheating a little. This Booker-winning novel isn’t based on the life of Henry James, but the protagonist is a James scholar, and the book reads like a novel that James might have written had he only lived another hundred years.

• Felony: The Private History of The Aspern Papers by Emma Tennant
In Felony, Emma Tennant — best known for her sequels to Pride and Prejudice and for Sylvia and Ted, a fictional account of Sylvia Plath’s marriage to Ted Hughes — portrays James’ relationship with the American novelist Constance Woolson and the writing of his novella The Aspern Papers.

• The Year of Henry James by David Lodge
Not a novel, but very interesting if you want to read about the process of creating a novel and the frustrations of publishing one. Half of this book of essays is taken up by Lodge’s account of the year he and Colm Toibin went head-to-head with their novels about Henry James. Toibin was shortlisted for the Booker; Lodge didn’t even make the longlist. (For what it’s worth, I think he was robbed.) You can feel his frustration through the page: “I can truthfully say ... that I have never enjoyed writing a book more, and publishing one less.” Four years later, he still hasn’t read The Master.

• Dictation by Cynthia Ozick
A collection of four novellas. The title story describes the collusion of the female secretaries of Henry James and Joseph Conrad to leave their own marks on their employers’ manuscripts. It is an entertaining and mischievous, if occasionally predictable, story from my favorite literary critic.

• Wild Nights! by Joyce Carol Oates
This collection of novellas depicts the last days of five major American writers: Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and Henry James. The novella about James, “The Master at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital 1914-1916,” describes days spent as a volunteer at a military hospital. It is a poignant and haunting and clever story, and it makes the point that no matter how much ink we spill on James’ life and work, we’ll never know the real Henry James.