Henry James

This Library of America volume brings together one of Henry James’s most unusual experiments and one of his most beloved masterpiecesWriting to his friend William Dean Howells, Henry James characterized his experimental novel, The Sacred Fount, as the only one of his novels to be told in the first person, as “a fine flight into the high fantastic.” While traveling to the country house of Newmarch for a weekend party, the nameless narrator becomes obsessed with the idea that a person may become younger or cleverer by tapping the “sacred fount” of another person. Convinced that Grace Brissenden has become younger by drawing upon her husband, Guy, the narrator seeks to discover the source of the newfound wit of Gilbert Long, previously “a fine piece of human furniture.” His perplexing and ambiguous quest, and the varying reactions it provokes from the other guests, calls into question the imaginative inquiry central to James’s art of the novel. James described the essential idea of The Wings of the Dove as “a young person conscious of a great capacity for life, but early stricken and doomed, condemned to die under short respite, while also enamoured of the world.” The heroine, a wealthy young American heiress, Milly Theale (inspired by James’s beloved cousin Minny Temple), is slowly drawn into a trap set for her by the English adventuress Kate Croy and her lover, the journalist Morton Densher. The unexpected outcome of their mercenary scheme provides the resolution to a tragic story of love and betrayal, innocence and experience that has long been acknowledged as one of James’s supreme achievements as a novelist. This volume prints the New York Edition text of The Wings of the Dove, and includes the illuminating preface James wrote for that edition. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

M. Nioche wore a glossy wig of an unnatural color which overhung his little meek white vacant face and left it hardly more expressive than the unfeatured block upon which these articles are displayed in the barber's window.

Henry James led a wandering life, which took him far from his native shores, but he continued to think of New York City, where his family had settled for several years during his childhood, as his hometown. Here Colm T ib n, the author of the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel The Master, a portrait of Henry James, brings together for the first time all the stories that James set in New York City. Written over the course of James's career and ranging from the deliciously tart comedy of the early "An International Episode" to the surreal and haunted corridors of "The Jolly Corner," and including "Washington Square," the poignant novella considered by many (though not, as it happens, by the author himself) to be one of James's finest achievements, the nine fictions gathered here reflect James's varied talents and interests as well as the deep and abiding preoccupations of his imagination. And throughout the book, as T ib n's fascinating introduction demonstrates, we see James struggling to make sense of a city in whose rapidly changing outlines he discerned both much that he remembered and held dear as well as everything about America and its future that he dreaded most. Stories included: The Story of a MasterpieceA Most Extraordinary CaseCrawford's ConsistencyAn International EpisodeThe Impressions of a CousinThe Jolly CornerWashington SquareCrapy CorneliaA Round of Visits

Standing on the shore of Lake Geneva, young writer Frederick Winterbourne is immediately drawn to the flighty Daisy Miller. As disdain about her recklessness with men resonates around the aristocratic circles, Winterbourne continues to defend her, but at what cost? As an intriguing tale of passion and romance unfolds, Winterbourne is confronted with a tragedy that will haunt him forever." Daisy Miller" opens as a Ambassadors Theatre Group production at the Malvern Theatre followed by a UK tour in September 2005.

As "The Europeans" opens, Eugenia and Felix, the "Europeans" of the title, are in Boston. Recently her marriage to a German prince has come upart, and she and her brother Felix are visiting relatives in the countryside near Boston, looking to arrange a wealthy second marriage for Eugenia. It's a satire on a certain level -- a masterly short novel (well, short for James) that shows what Rebecca West calles James's "clear sunlit charm"; for good reason it's become one of James's most popular novels.