Mrs Gereth is convinced that Fleda Vetch would make the perfect daughter-in-law. Only the dreamy, highly-strung young woman can genuinely appreciate, and perhaps eventually share, Mrs Gereth's passion for her 'things' - the antique treasures she has amassed at Poynton Park in the south of England. Owen Gereth, however, has inconveniently become engaged to the uncultured Mona Brigstock. As a dramatic family quarrel unfolds, the hesitating Fleda is drawn in, yet she remains reluctant to captivate Owen, who seems as attracted to her as she is to him. Is she motivated by scruple or fear? In...

Henry James wrote with an imperial elegance of style, whether his subjects were American innocents or European sophisticates, incandescent women or their vigorous suitors. His omniscient eye took in the surfaces of cities, the nuances of speech, dress, and manner, and, above all, the microscopic interactions, hesitancies, betrayals, and self-betrayals that are the true substance of relationships. The entirely new "Portable Henry James" provides an unparalleled range of this great body of work: seven major tales, including "Daisy Miller, The Turn of the Screw," "The Beast in the Jungle," and...

In this unique and long-awaited volume, Michael Anesko documents the literary cross-fertilization between Henry James and William Dean Howells, collecting 151 letters, nearly all the extant correspondence between the two men, as well as the most significant critical commentary James wrote on Howells and Howells wrote on James.

Scholars have long recognized the peculiar importance of the relationship between these two exponents of realistic fiction--their mutual respect and occasional animosity. But the record of their affinities and substantial differences has never before been so amply...

In "The Art of Criticism," William Veeder and Susan M. Griffin have brought together for the first time the best of the Master's critical work: the most important of his Prefaces, which R. P. Blackmur has called "the most sustained and I think the most eloquent and original piece of literary criticism in existence"; his studies of Hawthorne, George Eliot, Balzac, Zola, de Maupassant, Turgenev, Sante-Beuve, and Arnold; and his essays on the function of criticism and the future of the novel.
The editors have provided what James himself emphasized in his literary criticism-the text's...

Legend has tended to preserve Henry James as "The Master" that Joseph Conrad called him, a rather long-winded Olympian given to great utterances on the art of fiction and the writing of profound psychological studies. The real-life figure revealed in these letters is more terse, and even astringent, a professional writer, an eager observer of life, a man who delighted in meeting people and who made an art of friendship, but who did not hesitate to descend into the marketplace of letters and get the best possible price for his wares.Leon Edel designed this selection to show the kinds of...

One of the great heroines of American literature, Isabel Archer, journeys to Europe in order to, as Henry James writes in his 1908 Preface, "affront her destiny." James began The Portrait of a Lady without a plot or subject, only the slim but provocative notion of a young woman taking control of her fate. The result is a richly imagined study of an American heiress who turns away her suitors in an effort to first establish--and then protect--her independence. But Isabel's pursuit of spiritual freedom collapses when she meets the captivating Gilbert Osmond. "James's formidable powers of...

Originally published in The Cornhill Magazine in 1878 and in book form in 1879, Daisy Miller brought Henry James his first widespread commercial and critical success. The young Daisy Miller, an American on holiday with her mother on the shores of Switzerland's Lac Leman, is one of James's most vivid and tragic characters. Daisy's friendship with an American gentleman, Mr. Winterbourne, and her subsequent infatuation with a passionate but impoverished Italian bring to life the great Jamesian themes of Americans abroad, innocence versus experience, and the grip of fate. As...

Washington Square follows the coming-of-age of its plain-faced, kindhearted heroine, Catherine Sloper. Much to her father's vexation, a handsome opportunist named Morris Townsend woos the long-suffering heiress, intent on claiming her fortune. When Catherine stubbornly refuses to call off her engagement, Dr. Sloper forces Catherine to choose between her inheritance and the only man she will ever truly love. Cynthia Ozick, in her Introduction to what she calls Henry James's "most American fiction," writes that "every line, every paragraph, every chapter of Washington Square] is...

This book is a collection of eight tales of Henry James's high maturity: The Author of Beltraffio, Brooksmith, The Altar of the Dead, The Figure in the Carpet, In The Cage, Broken Wings, The Great Good Place, The Jolly Corner.

The "Textual Appendix" includes notes on the novel s textual history and lists all substantive revisions that James made to the novel, both in 1902 and in1909. "The Author and the Novel," introduced by editorial commentary and new to the Second Edition, includes selections from James s notebooks, letters, travel books, and autobiographical writings, which illuminate his conception and assessment of The Wings of the Dove. "Criticism" reflects the lively interpretive and theoretical writing that The Wings of the Dove has enjoyed since the previous edition was published in 1978. Eleven essays...