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...