 His account therefore moved directly from James's childhood, when he trailed after his older brother, to elderly invalidism.As more material became available to scholars, including the diaries of contemporaries and hundreds of affectionate and sometimes erotic letters written by James to younger men, the picture of neurotic celibacy gave way to a portrait of a closeted homosexual.Between 1953 and 1972, Leon Edel wrote a major five-volume biography of James, which accessed unpublished letters and documents after Edel gained the permission of James's family.