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In 1878 William James signed a contract with the New York publisher Henry Holt for a psychology textbook he expected to finish in two years. It took him twelve. The Principles of Psychology came out in 1890 in two volumes and about 1,200 pages, and gave the language the phrase “stream of consciousness”. By then James, trained as a doctor and never in practice, had taught the first experimental psychology courses in the United States at Harvard. He then turned to religion, in his Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, and to philosophy, where he became the best-known voice of pragmatism. This guide covers his 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1890–1912 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
William James’s best-known books are The Principles of Psychology (1890), The Will to Believe (1897), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and Pragmatism (1907). Start with The Varieties of Religious Experience: it is built from first-hand accounts and needs no background in philosophy. The guide below covers all 12 key books and the best order to read them.
Where to Start with William James
If you want his most widely read book
→ The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) — religion studied through what people say they experienced.
If you want the founding text of American psychology
→ The Principles of Psychology (1890) — read the chapters on habit and the stream of thought first.
If you want his philosophy in one short book
→ Pragmatism (1907) — eight lectures, written for a general audience.
If you want something short and practical
→ Talks to Teachers on Psychology (1899) — psychology for teachers, plus two essays on what makes a life significant.
12 William James Books, in Order
The Principles of Psychology
The textbook James agreed to write for Henry Holt in 1878 and delivered twelve years later, in two volumes of about 1,200 pages. Its chapters on habit, the self, attention, emotion and “The Stream of Thought” describe the mind as a continuous flow rather than a chain of separate ideas. It also sets out the theory of emotion he had first published in 1884, now known as the James–Lange theory.
Psychology
A one-volume abridgement of The Principles for students, published two years after the full work. Students at the time nicknamed the two books “the James” and “the Jimmy”; the shorter one was used as a college textbook for decades.
The Will to Believe
Ten essays, led by the 1896 lecture “The Will to Believe”, which argues that when a choice between beliefs is live, forced and momentous and the evidence cannot settle it, a person has the right to decide by temperament and need. It answers W. K. Clifford’s claim that it is always wrong to believe on insufficient evidence. Bertrand Russell was among its critics.
Human Immortality
His Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard of 1897, a short book. James does not argue that life continues after death; he argues that brain science does not rule it out, since the brain might transmit consciousness rather than produce it.
Talks to Teachers on Psychology
Lectures on habit, attention, memory and interest, written for schoolteachers, followed by three talks to students. These include “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”, about how little we see of what makes other people’s lives meaningful to them, and “What Makes a Life Significant”.
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Twenty Gifford Lectures given at the University of Edinburgh from May 1901. James sets doctrine and churches aside and works from personal testimony: the “healthy-minded” and the “sick soul”, the divided self, conversion, saintliness and mysticism, which he marks by four traits: ineffability, noetic quality, transiency and passivity. He separates the question of where an experience comes from from the question of what it is worth.
Pragmatism
Eight lectures given at the Lowell Institute in Boston and at Columbia University in 1906 and 1907. Building on ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce, James proposes judging an idea by its practical consequences in experience, and treats truth as something that happens to an idea as it proves itself. It was published the year he resigned his Harvard professorship.
A Pluralistic Universe
The Hibbert Lectures he gave in Oxford “on the present situation in philosophy”. James argues against monism and the idealists’ picture of reality as one static whole, and makes the case for a universe of many parts, with chapters on Hegel, Gustav Fechner and Henri Bergson.
The Meaning of Truth
Essays written between 1884 and 1909 that defend and clarify the account of truth in Pragmatism against its critics, who had read it as saying that whatever is useful to believe is true.
Some Problems of Philosophy
The introductory textbook James was writing when he died in 1910, left unfinished and published the following year. It covers metaphysics, the problem of the one and the many, novelty and causation.
Memories and Studies
Late addresses and essays collected after his death, including “The Moral Equivalent of War” (1910), which asks how the discipline and solidarity of military life could be put to peaceful use, his oration on Robert Gould Shaw, and his account of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Essays in Radical Empiricism
Edited after his death by his colleague and later biographer Ralph Barton Perry, mostly from journal articles of 1904 and 1905. The essays include “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” and set out his theory of “pure experience”. Because James did not arrange it himself, it is not a systematic statement of his philosophy.
In What Order to Read William James
Publication order follows James’s own path, from psychology (1890–1899) to religion (1902) to philosophy (1907–1912), and the later books often answer the earlier ones. But it is not the easiest way in: The Principles of Psychology is long and partly technical, and the last three books were assembled after his death.
Most readers do better starting with The Varieties of Religious Experience or Talks to Teachers, then reading the essay “The Will to Believe” and Pragmatism. Read The Principles selectively: the chapters on habit, the stream of thought and the self stand on their own.
A reading path
1. The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
2. Talks to Teachers on Psychology (1899)
3. The Will to Believe (1897)
4. Pragmatism (1907)
5. The Principles of Psychology (1890)
Everything Else by William James
Beyond the 12 key books: 5 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Edited, collected and posthumous volumes
5
5 books · 1884–1992
- 1884The Literary Remains of the Late Henry Jameswritings of his father, with James’s introduction
- 1920The Letters of William Jamesedited by his son Henry James
- 1986Essays in Psychical Researchvolume 16 of The Works of William James, Harvard University Press
- 1987Writings 1902–1910Library of America edition, including Varieties and Pragmatism
- 1992Writings 1878–1899Library of America edition, including the Briefer Course
The years · 1842–1910
Quick facts about William James
- Known for
- William James is known as the father of American psychology and as the leading voice of pragmatism, the philosophy that judges ideas by their consequences in experience.
- 1842
- Born at the Astor House, New York City
- 1875
- First experimental psychology course in the US, at Harvard
- 1910
- Dies at Chocorua, New Hampshire
- Born
- 11 January 1842, Astor House, New York City
- Died
- 26 August 1910, Chocorua, New Hampshire, of heart failure
- Family
- Son of the theologian Henry James Sr.; brother of the novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James; Ralph Waldo Emerson was his godfather
- Education
- MD, Harvard Medical School, 1869; he never practised
- Harvard
- Taught from 1872; professor of philosophy from 1885; resigned in 1907
- Married
- Alice Howe Gibbens, in 1878; five children
- Students
- Included Theodore Roosevelt, W. E. B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, George Santayana and G. Stanley Hall
The red mark is 1890: The Principles of Psychology, the book that took him twelve years.
How William James Writes: Philosophy in Plain Speech
James writes in the first person and in everyday language, and he reaches for an image where other philosophers reach for a technical term: thought as a stream, habit as “the enormous fly-wheel of society”, the newborn’s world as a “blooming, buzzing confusion”. Jaroslav Pelikan remarked that he wrote philosophy in the manner of a novelist, and he was often compared with his brother Henry.
His method is to collect cases. The Varieties of Religious Experience is built on long quotations from diaries, letters and autobiographies, sorted into types before any conclusion is drawn, and The Principles moves between laboratory findings, introspection and everyday examples. Most of his later books began as lectures to general audiences, at Edinburgh, Boston, Columbia and Oxford, and keep the direct address of the lecture hall.
He wrote as an argument with himself as much as with others. The depression he went through in his twenties, the question of free will and the question of whether religious belief can be justified all run through the books, and he was willing to take seriously subjects his colleagues dismissed, from mind-cure movements to mediums.
Frequently asked questions about William James’s books
How many books has William James written?
About a dozen books of his own, published between 1890 and 1912, three of them after his death. All 12 key books are on this page, from The Principles of Psychology (1890) to Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912); his letters and psychical research essays were collected later.
What are William James’s books in order?
The Principles of Psychology (1890), Psychology: Briefer Course (1892), The Will to Believe (1897), Human Immortality (1898), Talks to Teachers on Psychology (1899), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Pragmatism (1907), A Pluralistic Universe (1909), The Meaning of Truth (1909), Some Problems of Philosophy (1911), Memories and Studies (1911) and Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912).
Where should I start with William James?
With The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). It is made of first-hand accounts and needs no philosophy background. For something shorter, try Talks to Teachers on Psychology or the eight lectures of Pragmatism.
What is William James’s most famous book?
The Principles of Psychology (1890) is his most important work for psychology, and the source of the phrase “stream of consciousness”. The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) is the one most read outside universities.
Was William James related to Henry James?
Yes. The novelist Henry James was his younger brother, and their sister Alice James kept a diary that was published after her death. Their father, Henry James Sr., was a theologian and writer.
Why is William James called the father of American psychology?
He taught the first experimental psychology courses in the United States at Harvard in 1875, set up one of the first psychology laboratories there, and wrote The Principles of Psychology, the field’s standard American text for a generation. A 2002 survey in the Review of General Psychology ranked him the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.
What is pragmatism, according to William James?
The view that the meaning of an idea lies in its practical consequences in experience, and that ideas become true as they prove themselves in use. He developed it from Charles Sanders Peirce and set it out in Pragmatism (1907) and The Meaning of Truth (1909).
Did William James believe in psychics?
He studied them seriously. He attended the founding meeting of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1884, sat with the Boston medium Leonora Piper from 1885 and became convinced she showed knowledge she could not have gained normally, and he gave a presidential address to the Society for Psychical Research in 1896. The psychologists James McKeen Cattell and Edward Titchener criticised this work as unscientific, and in 1909 James wrote that he was “theoretically no further” than when he began.
When did William James die?
On 26 August 1910, of heart failure, at his summer home in Chocorua, New Hampshire. He is buried in the family plot in Cambridge Cemetery, Massachusetts. Some Problems of Philosophy, Memories and Studies and Essays in Radical Empiricism were published after his death.
Footnotes
- William James — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- William James — Britannica summary
- Who is William James? — William James Center, University of Potsdam
- William James — Gifford Lectures archive
- William James — Psi Encyclopedia, Society for Psychical Research
- The Varieties of Religious Experience — EBSCO Research Starters
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.”
— William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890)
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