Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

Transplanted to Europe from her native America, Isabel Archer has candour, beauty, intelligence, an independent spirit and a marked enthusiasm for life. An unexpected inheritance apparently gives her freedom, but despite all her natural advantages she makes one disastrous error of judgement and the result is genuinely tragic. Her tale, told with James' inimitable poise, is of the widest relevance.The phase when his (Henry James') genius functioned with the freest and fullest vitality is represen...

With an Introduction by Pat Righelato, University of Reading.The child of parents who divorce, remarry and then embark on adulterous affairs, Maisie Farange survives by her intelligence and spirit. For all its sombre theme of childhood innocence exposed to a corrupted adult world, this novel is one of James's comic masterpieces. The outrageous behaviour of the characters on the seedy fringes of the English upper class is conveyed with wit and relish. The dual perspective of a sophisticated narra...

The Wings of the Dove is a tale of desire and possession, of love and death. It is in essence a simple story, but one that opens up the great subject of art: life itself. To tackle this, James moves between fairytale storylines and the startlingly modern techniques of his testing late style. An unspeakable subtext lies beneath the silence. Distinct points of view and different centres of consciousness betray the dislocation of the social facade from the desolation beneath. For all the familiar s...

Henry James's last completed novel, The Golden Bowl, is the story of two flawed marriages. The lives and relationships of Maggie Verver and her widowed American millionaire father, Adam, are changed and challenged by the beautiful and charming Charlotte Stant, who is the former lover of Maggie's husband, the impoverished Italian, Prince Amerigo.The narrative is underpinned by complex symbolism. The gilded crystal bowl with its almost invisible flaw is the vehicle which James uses to reveal past ...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury.The Turn of the Screw is the classic ghost story for which James is most remembered. Set in a country house, it is a chilling tale of the supernatural told by a master of the genre.The Aspern Papers is a tale of Americans in Europe, a theme in which Henry James is at his most assured and accomplished. The author cleverly evokes the drama of comedie humaine against the settings of a Venetian palace.An aparitie: ...

Introduction and Notes by Ian F.A. Bell, Professor of English Literature, University of Keele.Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 1870's, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 1840s, similarly a...