Henry James

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. One of Henry James's last three great novels, The Ambassadors offers a witty, observant and profound exploration of the contrast between American and European cultures and of the desire to 'live all you can'. It follows the journey of self-discovery taken by a middle-aged literary gentleman, Lambert Strether, as he sheds his New England perspective and comes to appreciate cosmopolitan society and values, although not without personal cost. This edition, based on the work's first book appearance (Methuen, 1903), illuminates its literary and cultural contexts, contains comprehensive annotation, and provides a detailed textual history. It will appeal to James scholars, book historians and students of early twentieth-century Anglo-American literature and culture, and re-introduce readers to this masterpiece.

Originally written as three complete books, this one-volume edition includes A Small Boy and Others, Notes of a Son and Brother, and The Middle Years. Begun when James was sixty-eight years old, it was written at a time when his great critical mind was actively devoted to the understanding of his existence in its complicated wholeness. The reader will come away from the book with a picture of the man within the novelist--the intimate basis of James's themes and methods. Taking its place beside The Education of Henry Adams and Hawthorne's "The Custom House," the work is an important contribution to America's autobiographic literature. It is a highly personal account of the great novelist's discovery of Europe and of his artistic vocation, as well as a fascinating story of the life of one of the most remarkable families of the nineteenth century, the members of which experienced, in James's own words, "the classic years of the great Americano-European legend." Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Golden Bowl, by Henry James, is a complex, intense study of marriage and adultery and completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James' career. The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of interrelationships between a father and daughter and their respective spouses. The novel focuses deeply and almost exclusively on the consciousness of the central characters, with sometimes obsessive detail but also with powerful insight. The title is taken from Ecclesiastes 12: "Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity."

The Wings of the Dove is a 1902 novel by Henry James. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honorable motives, while others are more self-interested. Literary significance and criticism The Wings of the Dove has one of the strongest critical positions of any of James' works, although James himself sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with it. In his preface to the New York Edition, James spent much time confessing to supposed faults in the novel: defective structure, characters not as well presented as they could be, and a general failure to realize his initial plan for the book. By and large, critics have regarded these faults as venial or nonexistent. Instead, they've concentrated on the central characters and supporting cast, and the technique that James uses in their presentation. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Wings of the Dove 26th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.