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Phantoms of shadow and madness, twin creatures of evil, ghosts of the condemned. Two figures, half-seen, lurking in twilit windows and dark towers, beckoning...silent...coming ever closer. Walking dead who seek to control the children's bodies, steal their minds, destroy their souls...
Flora and Miles claim to see and hear nothing. But, with mounting horror, their governess discovers the children want the ghosts--
As much as the evil wants them...
Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title—offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All editions are complete and unabridged, and feature Introductions and Afterwords.
This edition of The Turn of the Screw includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
A young governess arrives at a secluded country estate, hired by the manor’s often-absent master to look after his orphaned niece and nephew. The young woman, a parson’s daughter, is immediately charmed by eight-year-old Flora—and Miles, two years older, seems like a perfect little gentleman when he is unexpectedly sent home from his boarding school.
But Miles’s steadfast refusal to reveal the cause of his expulsion is troubling, as are the staff’s whispered stories about the previous governess, Miss Jessel, and her lover, the mysterious valet, Peter Quint, both of whom are now dead. Most disturbing of all are the spectral figures wandering the grounds of Bly that only the new governess can see: a woman and a dark man who seem to take a special interest in Miles and Flora. No longer sure of what is real and whom she can trust, the governess desperately tries to hold on to her sanity and protect the innocent children from forces too sinister to name.
A literary masterpiece whose mysteries are open to endless interpretation, The Turn of the Screw has been haunting readers for more than a century.
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From the Paperback edition.
In the wake of her father’s death, young Isabel Archer decides to travel to England to visit her aunt, leaving behind the life set out for her in America and spurning the romantic overtures of her Bostonian suitor. At her aunt’s country estate, Isabel is determined to plot a new course unburdened by routine. But, prodded by convention at every turn, Isabel makes a decision that not only undermines her longing for independence, but may seal her fate forever.
Among one of Henry James’s most timeless works, The Portrait of a Lady is a rich and nuanced depiction of human psychology and the tension between the pull of social norms and the desire for autonomy.
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On the surface, Daisy Miller unfolds a simple story of a young American girl's willful yet innocent flirtation with a young Italian, and its unfortunate consequences. But throughout the narrative, James contrasts American customs and values with European manners and morals in a tale rich in psychological and social insight. A vivid portrayal of Americans abroad and a telling encounter between the values of the Old and New World, Daisy Miller is an ideal introduction to the work of one of America's greatest writers of fiction.
One night a ghost appears before the governess. It is the dead lover of Miss Jessel, the former governess. Later, the ghost of Miss Jessel herself appears before the governess and the little girl. Moreover, both the governess and the housekeeper suspect that the two spirits have appeared to the boy in private. The children, however, adamantly refuse to acknowledge the presence of the two spirits, in spite of indications that there is some sort of evil communication going on between the children and the ghosts.
Without resorting to clattering chains, demonic noises, and other melodramatic techniques, this elegantly told tale succeeds in creating an atmosphere of tingling suspense and unspoken horror matched by few other books in the genre. Known for his probing psychological novels dealing with the upper classes, James in this story tried his hand at the occult — and created a masterpiece of the supernatural that has frightened and delighted readers for nearly a century.
By turns chilling, funny, tragic, and profound, Henry James’s short novels allow readers to experience the full range of his skills and vision. The title story, a chilling masterpiece of psychological terror, mixes the phantoms of the mind with those of the supernatural. “Daisy Miller,” the tale of a provincial American girl in Rome that established James’s literary reputation, and “An International Episode” are superb examples of his focus on the clash between American and European values. And in “The Aspern Papers,” “The Alter of the Dead,” and “The Beast in the Jungle,” the author’s remarkable sense of irony, his love of plot twists, and his view of male-female relationships find exquisite expression.
With an Introduction by Fred Kaplan
From the Paperback edition.
‘Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.’
Isabel Archer is a beautiful, intelligent and independent young woman. Brought from America to England by her wealthy Aunt who seeks to further her education and find her niece a husband, Isabel is determined to shape her own future – one that does not necessarily entail becoming a wife. Isabel inherits a fortune when her rich uncle dies and feels even more inclined to turn down two eligible suitors on the basis that she is a woman of her own means. However, a trip to Italy heralds her downfall when she meets the charming Gilbert Osmond, a worthless, yet ambitious and scheming dilettante.
The heroine of this powerful novel, often considered James’s greatest work, is the spirited young American Isabel Archer. Blessed by nature and fortune, she journeys to Europe to seek the full realization of her potential—or in modern terms, “to find herself”—but what awaits her there may prove to be her undoing. During her journey, wooers vie for her attentions, including an English aristocrat, a perfect American gentleman, and a sensitive expatriate. But it is only after the ingenue falls prey to the schemes of an infinitely sophisticated older woman that her life takes on its true form. With its brilliant interplay of tensions and characters, The Portrait of a Lady is a timeless and essential American novel.
With an Introduction by Regina Barreca
and an Afterword by Colm Tóibín
From the Paperback edition.
"Olive will come down in about ten minutes; she told me to tell you that. About ten; that is exactly like Olive. Neither five nor fifteen, and yet not ten exactly, but either nine or eleven. She didn't tell me to say she was glad to see you, because she doesn't know whether she is or not, and she wouldn't for the world expose herself to telling a fib. She is very honest, is Olive Chancellor; she is full of rectitude. Nobody tells fibs in Boston; I don't know what to make of them all. Well, I am very glad to see you, at any rate."
These words were spoken with much volubility by a fair, plump, smiling woman who entered a narrow drawing-room in which a visitor, kept waiting for a few moments, was already absorbed in a book. The gentleman had not even needed to sit down to become interested: apparently he had taken up the volume from a table as soon as he came in, and, standing there, after a single glance round the apartment, had lost himself in its pages. He threw it down at the approach of Mrs. Luna, laughed, shook hands with her, and said in answer to her last remark, "You imply that you do tell fibs. Perhaps that is one."
"Oh no; there is nothing wonderful in my being glad to see you," Mrs. Luna rejoined, "when I tell you that I have been three long weeks in this unprevaricating city."
"That has an unflattering sound for me," said the young man. "I pretend not to prevaricate."
"Dear me, what's the good of being a Southerner?" the lady asked. "Olive told me to tell you she hoped you will stay to dinner. And if she said it, she does really hope it. She is willing to risk that."
Christopher Newman is an American expatriate in Paris; his fortune made, he has moved to the Old World to enjoy his wealth and find a wife. Newman soon falls for a young widow, the aristocratic Claire de Bellegarde, but his brash New World sensibility horrifies her haughty family. Though the family oppose the idea of the couple’s marriage, reversals of fortune cause them to reconsider. When another suitor arrives on the scene all appears lost, until Newman befriends Claire’s younger brother Valentin and finds himself in possession of a dark family secret. As the novel unfolds, James’s unmistakable stylistic grace combines with his less well-known sense of melodramatic romance, resulting in a finale that combines duels, death, betrayal and blackmail.
Isabel, who has been taken abroad by an eccentric aunt to fulfill her potential, attracts the passions of a British aristocrat and a brash American, as well as the secret adoration of her invalid cousin, Ralph Touchett. But her vulnerability and innocence lead her not to love but to a fatal entrapment in intrigue, deception, and betrayal. This brilliant interior drama of the forming of a woman’s consciousness makes The Portrait of a Lady a masterpiece of James’s middle years.
From the Paperback edition.
“The Bostonians has a vigor and blithe wit found nowhere else in James,” writes A. S. Byatt in her Introduction. “It is about idealism in a democracy that is still recovering from a civil war bitterly fought for social ideals . . . [written] with a ferocious, precise, detailed—and wildly comic—realism.”
* Concise introductions to the novels and other texts
* All 23 novels – including THE OTHER HOUSE, often missed out of collections
* The unfinished novels THE IVORY TOWER and THE SENSE OF THE PAST
* The novel THE WHOLE FAMILY, which James collaborated on with 11 other authors
* All 112 of the novellas (including THE ASPERN PAPERS and THE TURN OF THE SCREW) and short stories with BOTH chronological and alphabetical contents tables
* Includes James' rare plays
* The complete travel writing, with many rare works appearing in digital print for the first time
* Rare Non-Fiction collections and essays
* Features James' three autobiographies, available nowhere else - explore the Great Master's literary life!
* Special BONUS critical texts - discover how writers such as Conrad, Wells, Woolf and Stevenson viewed James’ works
* Many images relating to James and his work
* COMPLETELY UPDATED with revised texts and improvements
* Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres
The Novels
WATCH AND WARD
RODERICK HUDSON
THE AMERICAN
THE EUROPEANS
CONFIDENCE
WASHINGTON SQUARE
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
THE BOSTONIANS
THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA
THE REVERBERATOR
THE TRAGIC MUSE
THE OTHER HOUSE
THE SPOILS OF POYNTON
WHAT MAISIE KNEW
THE AWKWARD AGE
THE SACRED FOUNT
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
THE AMBASSADORS
THE GOLDEN BOWL
THE OUTCRY
THE WHOLE FAMILY
THE IVORY TOWER
THE SENSE OF THE PAST
The Tales
LIST OF TALES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
LIST OF TALES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
The Plays
PYRAMUS AND THISBE
STILL WATERS
A CHANGE OF HEART
DAISY MILLER
TENANTS
DISENGAGED
THE ALBUM
THE REPROBATE
GUY DOMVILLE
SUMMERSOFT
THE HIGH BID
THE OUTCRY
The Travel Writing
TRANSATLANTIC SKETCHES
PORTRAITS OF PLACES
A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE
ENGLISH HOURS
THE AMERICAN SCENE
ITALIAN HOURS
The Non-Fiction
FRENCH NOVELISTS AND POETS
HAWTHORNE
PARTIAL PORTRAITS
ESSAYS IN LONDON AND ELSEWHERE
PICTURE AND TEXT
WILLIAM WETMORE STORY AND HIS FRIENDS
VIEWS AND REVIEWS
NOTES ON NOVELISTS
WITHIN THE RIM AND OTHER ESSAYS
NOTES AND REVIEWS
THE ART OF THE NOVEL
The Letters
THE LETTERS OF HENRY JAMES
The Autobiographies
A SMALL BOY AND OTHERS
NOTES OF A SON AND BROTHER
THE MIDDLE YEARS
The Criticism
HENRY JAMES — AN APPRECIATION by Joseph Conrad
HENRY JAMES, JR by William Dean Howells
HENRY JAMES: A CRITICAL STUDY by Ford Madox Ford
SUSPENDED JUDGMENTS: HENRY JAMES by John Cowper Powys
AN EXTRACT FROM ‘THE DECAY OF LYING’ by Oscar Wilde
OTHER ESSAYS: HENRY JAMES by Virginia Woolf
MEMOIRS AND PORTRAITS: AN ESSAY AND LETTER by Robert Louis Stevenson
UNDERWOODS: POEMS ADDRESSED TO HENRY JAMES by Robert Louis Stevenson
INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES by F. W. Dupee
OF ART, OF LITERATURE, OF MR. HENRY JAMES by H. G. Wells
HENRY JAMES by Arnold Bennett
The most enduringly popular of Henry James' novels, The Portrait of a Lady reflects the author's interest in the contrast between the Old and New Worlds. He traces Isabel's progress across England, Paris, Florence, and Rome with trenchant observations on customs and attitudes. The heroine's difficulties in reconciling her personal liberty with social propriety express James' shrewd appraisals of the naivete and nobility of the American character, as well as his views on the subtle refinements and conventionality of European culture. A gripping exploration of the clash between freedom and responsibility, this novel offers an accessible entree into the work of Henry James.
Inspired by an actual incident involving Claire Clairmont, once the mistress of Lord Byron, this masterfully written tale incorporates all those elements expected from James: psychological subtlety, deft plotting, the clash of cultures, and profoundly nuanced representation of scene, mood, and character. This volume also contains James's celebrated Preface from the New York edition of his collected works.
The governess had been left in the complete charge of two children, Miles and Flora, by their uncle. He wants nothing to do with them and tells her she must deal with any issue that arises.
After her parents’ bitter divorce, young Maisie Farange finds herself shuttled between her selfish mother and vain father, who value her only as a means for provoking each other. Maisie—solitary, observant, and wise beyond her years—is drawn into an increasingly entangled adult world of intrigue and sexual betrayal until she is finally compelled to choose her own future. Published in 1897 as Henry James was experimenting with narrative technique and fascinated by the idea of the child’s-eye view, What Maisie Knew is a subtle yet devastating portrayal of an innocent adrift in a corrupt society.
Neither Edith Wharton nor E. M. Forster admired it, but Louis Auchincloss calls The Wings of the Dove 'perhaps the greatest of Henry James's novels.' Published in 1902, the novel represented something of a comeback for James, whose only 'bestseller,' Daisy Miller, had appeared more than two decades earlier. Set amid the splendor of fashionable London drawing rooms and gilded Venetian palazzos, the story concerns a pair of lovers who conspire to obtain the fortune of a doomed American heiress. But the naïve young woman becomes both their victim and their redeemer in James's meticulously designed drama of treachery and self-betrayal. 'It seems to me that I know the characters even more intimately than I know the characters in the earlier novels of his Balzac period,' said Louis Auchincloss. 'The Wings of the Dove represents the pinnacle of James's prose.' This version is the definitive New York Edition, which appeared in 1907, together with the author's Preface.
When Basil Ransom, a headstrong Mississippi lawyer, comes to Boston to call on his wealthy activist cousin, Olive, an epic battle of wills ensues. Basil is a conservative of the most ardent type while Cousin Olive is steadfast in her radicalism. Perhaps for a laugh, perhaps for a story to tell his lawyer friends back in Mississippi, Basil accompanies Olive to a women’s emancipation rally, whereupon he falls irrevocably in love with a young suffragette, Miss Verena Tarrant, and sets about trying to rewrite her beliefs. The problem is that Olive has been grooming Miss Tarrant as her protégé. Will Basil reform the lovely young activist orator, or will Olive win the young woman’s heart and mind?
Often proclaimed James’s funniest novel and regarded as his most successful political work, The Bostonians deals with love and friendship in the awkward landscape of shifting social roles, feminism in post–Civil War America, and a woman’s place in this brave new world. Funny, astute, and merciless, The Bostonians is one of James’s most successful portrayals of a world teetering between old values and the relentless march of social progress.
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John Marcher, the protagonist, is reacquainted with May Bartram, a woman he knew ten years earlier, who remembers his odd secret: Marcher is seized with the belief that his life is to be defined by some catastrophic or spectacular event, lying in wait for him like a "beast in the jungle." May decides to buy a house in London with the money she inherited from a great aunt, and to spend her days with Marcher, curiously awaiting what fate has in store for him. Marcher is a hopeless egoist, who believes that he is precluded from marrying so that he does not subject his wife to his "spectacular fate".
He takes May to the theater and invites her to an occasional dinner, but does not allow her to get close to him. As he sits idly by and allows the best years of his life to pass, he takes May down as well, until the denouement where he learns that the great misfortune of his life was to throw it away, and to ignore the love of a good woman, based upon his preposterous sense of foreboding.
"The Beast in the Jungle" by Henry James centers around John Marcher and May Bartram who form a strong friendship based on John's fear that some significant event is waiting for him.
James drew on the memory of a beloved cousin who died young to create one of the three central characters, Milly Theale, an heiress with a short time to live and a passion for experiencing life to its fullest. To the creation of the other two, Merton Densher and the magnificent, predatory Kate Croy, who conspire in an act of deceit and betrayal, he brought a lifetime's distilled wisdom about the frailty of the human soul when it is trapped in the depths of need and desire. And he brought to the drama that unites these three characters, in the drawing rooms of London and on the storm-lit piazzas of Venice, a starkness and classical purity almost unprecedented in his work.
Under its brilliant, coruscating surfaces, beyond the scrim of its marvelous rhetorical and psychological devices, The Wings of the Dove offers an unfettered vision of our civilization and its discontents. It represents a culmination of James's art and, as such, of the art of the novel itself.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Milly and Susan are not introduced to the readers until the third chapter. The first two chapters are taken up with Kate Croy, who is Mrs. Lowder's niece, and Merton Densher, a journalist whom Kate is in love with.
James had high hopes for its success and was very disappointed with its slow sales. Critics feel it lakes a sympathetic character and that the descriptions of New England life lack spark. Chapters with no dialogue at all test the most diligent of Henry James aficionados.
The Bostonians is different from most of James books due to its strong political, rather than social, theme.
In The Golden Bowl, Maggie Verver and her widowed father are Americans living in England. At the beginning of the story, Maggie is marries Italian nobleman, Prince Amerigo. Maggie and Amerigo continue to live with Mr. Verver but as time passes her father considers that he himself should marry again.
‘The place, with its grey sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theatre after the performance-all strewn with crumpled playbills.’
Revered as one of the greatest ghost stories ever told, James’s The Turn of the Screw is an eerie Victorian masterpiece.
When an inexperienced governess goes to work at Bly, a country house in Essex to look after a young boy Miles and his sister Flora, all manner of strange events begin to occur. The governess spots a ghostly man and woman around the grounds and is told by the housekeeper that the valet and previous governess haunt the house. It soon becomes clear that the children are inexplicably connected to these ghosts in some way and the young governess struggles to protect the children, although from exactly what, she is not sure.
Exploring the psychological and sexual fears of an era, this ambiguous, suspenseful and anxiety-inspiring novella remains one of Henry James’s most well-known tales.
Throughout his career James was attracted to the ghost story genre. However, he was not fond of literature's stereotypical ghosts, the old-fashioned 'screamers' and 'slashers'. Rather, he preferred to create ghosts that were eerie extensions of everyday reality—"the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy," as he put it in the New York Edition preface to his final ghost story, "The Jolly Corner". The Turn of the Screw is no exception to this formula. In fact, many have wondered if he didn't intend the "strange and sinister" to be embroidered only on the governess's mind and not on objective reality. The result has been a long-standing critical dispute about the reality of the ghosts and the sanity of the governess. Beyond the dispute, critics have closely examined James's narrative technique for the story. The framing introduction and subsequent first-person narrative by the governess have been studied by theorists of fiction interested in the power of fictional narratives to convince or even manipulate readers. The imagery of The Turn of the Screw is reminiscent of the gothic genre. The emphasis on old and mysterious buildings throughout the novella reinforces this motif. James also relates the amount of light present in various scenes to the strength of the supernatural or ghostly forces apparently at work.