Most Popular Books by Henry James

This text presents a collection of 18 articles by Henry James on the social and political issues of his day. They focus on questions of gender and manners, religion and metaphysics, as well as grouping together all of his works on World War I.

Set in 1840, a young governess agrees to look after two orphans, a boy and a girl, in Bly, a seemingly idyllic country house. But, shortly after her arrival, she realises that they are not alone. There are others – the ghosts of Bly''s troubled past. The Governess will risk everything to keep the children safe, even if it means giving herself up to The Others. Years later, confronted by the past she is compelled to account for what actually happened to her and those under her protection. This fresh, thrilling adaptation of Henry James'' much-loved and genre defining classic ghost story Turn of the Screw lets you draw your own conclusions about the events at Bly and where guilt resides.

Isabel Archer rejects one man after another. With the inheritance from a wealthy relative, she can fulfill her dream of an independent life. She travels to Italy. In Florence, she meets the American expatriate and art collector Gilbert Osmond. He has charm and taste, but that''s pretty much all she knows about him. Despite her friends'' warnings, she says yes when he proposes. Unlike others, bound by conventions, Osmond gives the impression of being free. But what does Isabel really need his freedom for when she has her own? Isabel Archer is one of literature''s most talked-about female characters. The way Henry James portrays her, without analysis; solely through her expressions and experiences, makes The Portrait of a Lady [1881] one of the most innovative novels in literary history. HENRY JAMES [1843 -1916] was born in New York but emigrated to Europe early in life. He is one of the most important figures in Anglo-Saxon turn-of-the-century literature, with novels such as The American [1877] and the horror novel The Turn of the Screw [1898].

The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a book in 1881. It is one of James''s most popular long novels, and is regarded by critics as one of his finest. Henry James (1843–1916) was an Anglo-American writer who spent the bulk of his career in Britain. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. Story of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, a beautiful, intelligent, and headstrong American girl newly endowed with wealth and embarked in Europe on a treacherous journey to self-knowledge, is delineated with a magnificence that is at once casual and tense with force and insight. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. Like many of James''s novels, it is set in Europe, mostly England and Italy. Regarded as a masterpiece, this novel reflects James''s continuing interest in the differences between the New World and the Old, often to the detriment of the former. It also treats in a profound way the themes of personal freedom, responsibility, and betrayal. Adapted for the screen in 1968 and 1996 with Nicole Kidman.

After living abroad for 20 years, Henry James returned to his native America and travelled down the East Coast from Boston to Florida. This a journal describing his feelings on the rediscovery of the New York of his childhood, and the growth of modern commercial America. He muses on Thoreau, Hawthorne and Emerson; in Washington, he finds a cityscape devoid of spiritual symbols; in Richmond, thoughts of the civil war haunt him. Published in 1907, this journal also served as a farewell address to the country James would never live in again. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Henry James led a wandering life, which took him far from his native shores, but he continued to think of New York City, where his family had settled for several years during his childhood, as his hometown. Here Colm Tóibín, the author of the Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Master, a portrait of Henry James, brings together for the first time all the stories that James set in New York City. Written over the course of James’s career and ranging from the deliciously tart comedy of the early “An International Episode” to the surreal and haunted corridors of “The Jolly Corner,” and including “Washington Square,” the poignant novella considered by many (though not, as it happens, by the author himself) to be one of James’s finest achievements, the nine fictions gathered here reflect James’s varied talents and interests as well as the deep and abiding preoccupations of his imagination. And throughout the book, as Tóibín’s fascinating introduction demonstrates, we see James struggling to make sense of a city in whose rapidly changing outlines he discerned both much that he remembered and held dear as well as everything about America and its future that he dreaded most. Stories included: The Story of a Masterpiece A Most Extraordinary Case Crawford’s Consistency An International Episode The Impressions of a Cousin The Jolly Corner Washington Square Crapy Cornelia A Round of Visits

Famous tale of the supernatural telling of evil spirits which grip the souls of two children, as recounted from the diary of a governess on a lonely English estate.

The Complete Notebooks of Henry James opens a wide, clear window into the private workshop of America''s master novelist, the architect of modernism in fiction. It is a volume that deserves to be called definitive. Assembled and edited by Leon Edel, James''s much-acclaimed prizewinning biographer, and Lyall H. Powers, critic and editor of James''s letters to Edith Wharton, this book includes the nine scribbler-notebooks that were published by Oxford in 1947; these have been considerably updated and annotated to correct the identification of stories developed by James from his various notes and to reveal many noted Victorians James concealed through use of their initials. Certain omitted portions of the notebooks have also been restored. This volume is especially noteworthy for the body of new material that it contains. It includes a series of James''s pocket diaries in which, amid appointments and luncheon dates, he jotted down observations and ideas for his fiction and commented on his personal relations. Also here are some fugitive dictated notes, in which James offered an autobiographcial meditation on the "turning Point in his life and the "working out" of a story based on a passion murder by an American acquaintance in the south of France. James''s long out-of-print statements for his unfinished novels The Ivory Tower and The Sense of the Past, scenarios for unfinished plays, the writer''s deathbed dictation--all these are here as well. An appendix includes a substantial fragment of a story James never completed, and the book even provides insight into James''s "cash accounts." Everywhere throughout the collection, in writings never intended for the public eye, the artist is seen at work. his private prayers to his Muse and exhortations to himself make exhilarating reading.

In a masterful introductory essay, James E. Miller Jr., presents James''s theory of fiction in outline; he also contributes brief introductions to each of the seventeen chapters, summarizing the major points. Abundant guides direct the reader to subjects and sources.

The three novels in this Library of America volume from Henry James’s middle period explore some historical and social dilemmas that belong as much to our time as to his own. The Princess Casamassima was published in 1886, a year that saw riots of the unemployed in London. It is a political novel in which anarchists and terrorists conspire within a fin de siècle world of opulence and glamour. The action ranges from palaces to slums, from London to Paris to Venice and back again. The novel’s hero, Hyacinth Robinson, is torn between his loyalty to revolutionary causes—for which he is about to commit an act of violence that may cost him his life—and his taste for the artistic side of aristocratic culture, represented in part by the beautiful, wealthy, compassionate, and yet deceptive Princess of the title. Possibly to save Hyacinth, she becomes romantically involved with his fellow conspirator Paul Muniment, a calculating political operative, idealistic and treacherous by turns. Assassination plots, sexual betrayals, murder, suicide, and the fierce play of conflicting loyalties—all these bring into play an intricate abundance of attendant figures, like the rakish Captain Sholto and the appealing but faithless Millicent Henning. The Reverberator (1888) is a swiftly paced comic novel named after a newspaper that caters to the American public’s appetite for the “society news of every quarter of the globe.” Francie Dosson, the free-spirited daughter of a wealthy Boston family, innocently provides gossip to George Flack, a “young commercial American” who writes for the paper. His published report imperils her engagement to Gaston Probert, whose family is outraged by the airing of its secrets. James portrays the collision of easily shocked Old World propriety and self-assured New World naiveté with benevolent affection and spirited delight. The Tragic Muse (1890) explores with a topical realism not usually found in James the conflicts between art and politics, society and the Bohemian life. It does so with dazzling glimpses of Parisian theater and of London aestheticism, as articulated by the flamboyant and idealistic Gabriel Nash. At its center are four superbly drawn characters. The fascinating Miriam Rooth is an actress of overwhelming egotistic vitality and dedication to her art. Her suitor, the diplomat Peter Sherringham, is impassioned by her theatrical talent even while asking her to sacrifice it for his career. Nick Dormer faces a similar predicament in his engagement to the rich Julia Dallow, who wants him to forgo his painting so as to make use of her fortune in pursuit of his career in Parliament. Full of witty talk and vividly dramatic scenes, the novel includes a vast array of characters such as the impressive political matriarch Lady Dormer. Perhaps more than any of his novels, it attests to James’s recognition of the costs of any dedication, like his own, to creative achievement. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

"When timid and plain Catherine Sloper acquires a dashing and determined suitor, her father, convinced that the young man is nothing more than a fortune-hunter, decides to put a stop to their romance. Torn between a desire to win her father''s approval and passion for the first man who has ever declared his love for her, Catherine faces an agonizing choice, and eventually becomes all too aware of the restrictions that others seek to place on her freedom. James''s novel interweaves the public and private faces of nineteenth-century New York society, and is also a study of innocence destroyed."--BOOK JACKET.

When THE OTHER HOUSE first appeared in 1896 it caused one critic to declare thatit was the work which would secure James''s literary reputation.Presented in 3 acts,THE OTHER HOUSE combines James''s skills as a dramatist with the craftmanship of his novels.The story revolves around two neighbouring households their loves and rivalries.Meddlesome matchmaking,a death by drowning and unspoken yet all-consuming passions feature in this work,which is little known but displays the qualities which distinguish James''s more established masterpieces.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1914 Edition.

Kate Croy and her lover, journalist Merton Densher, scheme to extort money from a naive and trusting American heiress who is terminally ill. This edition includes letters and comments by James, along with criticism of the novel, then and now.