The Turn of the Screw, is a novel by Henry James. It was published in 1898. A governess comes to the care of two children in a decrepit Victorian mansion. What at first seems like a nice committed result in a nightmare situation. The children are impacted by the immediate past in which the previous governess, Miss Jessel and Peter Quint, the servant and valet pattern (children's uncle), maintained a murky relationship. One might assume that certain abuses occurred. Life with the previous governess and subsequent death have left an indelible mark on them. In trying to help them, the...

The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James. This dark comedy, seen as one of the masterpieces of James's final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad Newsome, his widowed fiancee's supposedly wayward son; he is to bring the young man back to the family business, but he encounters unexpected complications. The third-person narrative is told exclusively from Strether's point of view. Lewis Lambert Strether is the protagonist of Henry James's 1903 novel The Ambassadors. He is a cultured man in his fifties from the fictional town of...

Confidence is a novel by Henry James. This light and somewhat awkward comedy centers on artist Bernard Longueville, scientist Gordon Wright, and the sometimes inscrutable heroine, Angela Vivian. The plot rambles through various romantic entanglements before reaching an uncomplicated, but still believable happy ending. While sketching in Siena, Bernard Longueville meets Angela Vivian and her mother. Later, Bernard's friend and self-proclaimed "mad" scientist Gordon Wright calls Longueville to Baden-Baden to pass judgment on whether he should marry Angela. Bernard recommends against it, based...

The plot of Washington Square has the simplicity of old-fashioned melodrama: a plain-looking, good-hearted young woman, the only child of a rich widower, is pursued by a charming but unscrupulous man who seeks the wealth she will presumably inherit. On this premise, Henry James constructed one of his most memorable novels, a story in which love is answered with betrayal and loyalty leads inexorably to despair. In Washington Square (1880), Henry James reminisces about the New York he had known thirty years before as he tells the story of Catherine Sloper and her fortune-seeking suitor Morris...

The narrator, an unnamed illustrator and aspiring painter, hires a faded genteel couple, the Monarchs, as models, after they have lost most of their money and must find some line of work. They are the "real thing" in that they perfectly represent the aristocratic type, but they prove inflexible for the painter's work. He comes to rely much more on two lower-class subjects who are nevertheless more capable, Oronte, an Italian, and Miss Churm, a lower-class Englishwoman. The illustrator finally has to get rid of the Monarchs, especially after his friend and fellow artist Jack Hawley criticizes...

The Europeans: A sketch is a short novel by Henry James. It is essentially a comedy contrasting the behaviour and attitudes of two visitors from Europe with those of their relatives living in the 'new' world of New England. One of the most important themes of the novel is the comparison between European and American women, which James stresses through the great difference existing between Eugenia and the Wentworth ladies. Madame Munster is independent, modern, and displays hauteur. Gertrude and Charlotte lack this self-possession. For example, they tend to comply with their father's...

Un joven critico y editor fascinado con la obra del difunto poeta Jeffrey Aspern se entera de que Juliana Bordereau, una de sus musas, vive aun, anciana y aislada, en un palazzo veneciano. Convencido de que conserva cartas y material inedito del poeta, se acerca a ella camuflando sus intenciones y consigue que lo acepte como inquilino. El joven se introduce en un mundo agonico y fantasmagorico, volcado en el recuerdo, que la orgullosa anciana habita con la unica compania de una sobrina suya, una mujer ya madura que no parece haber conocido otra cosa que la reclusion y el legado de un...

The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James. This dark comedy, seen as one of the masterpieces of James's final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of Chad Newsome, his widowed fiancee's supposedly wayward son; he is to bring the young man back to the family business, but he encounters unexpected complications. The third-person narrative is told exclusively from Strether's point of view. Lewis Lambert Strether is the protagonist of Henry James's 1903 novel The Ambassadors. He is a cultured man in his fifties from the fictional town of...

Los embajadores es la muestra de mayor refinamiento del tema favorito de Henry James: el choque entre la inocencia americana y la experiencia europea. En esta ocasion, relata el viaje a Paris de Lambert Strether, un maduro hombre de mundo, con la mision de rescatar de las garras de una malvada europea a Chadwick, el hijo de la senora Newsome, una viuda rica con la que esta comprometido. Sin embargo, este embajador caera rendido a los pies de la cultura europea y a nuevas maneras de relacionarse. Esta comedia oscura, una de las obras maestras del ultimo periodo de James, sigue el viaje del...