Henry James

Reproduction of the original: The Two Magics by Henry James

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure. This edition of Henry James’s classic ghost stories features an afterword by bestselling author Kate Mosse OBE. A young governess is employed to look after two orphaned siblings in a grand country house. Isolated and inexperienced, she is at first charmed by the children – but gradually suspects that they may not be as innocent as they seem. She soon begins to see sinister figures at the window, but do they exist solely in her imagination, or are they ghosts intent on a terrible and devastating task? The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is one of the most famous and eerily equivocal ghost stories ever written. Owen Wingrave is the story of a son in a long line of military heroes who refuses to follow tradition, yet proves his bravery in a haunted room.

... My dear child, the bromide of sodium (if that's what you call it) proved perfectly useless. I don't mean that it did me no good, but that I never had occasion to take the bottle out of my bag. It might have done wonders for me if I had needed it; but I didn't, simply because I have been a wonder myself. Will you believe that I have spent the whole voyage on deck, in the most animated conversation and exercise? Twelve times round the deck make a mile, I believe; and by this measurement I have been walking twenty miles a day. And down to every meal, if you please, where I have displayed the appetite of a fish-wife. Of course the weather has been lovely; so there's no great merit. The wicked old Atlantic has been as blue as the sapphire in my only ring (a rather good one), and as smooth as the slippery floor of Madame Galopin's dining-room. We have been for the last three hours in sight of land, and we are soon to enter the Bay of New York, which is said to be exquisitely beautiful. But of course you recall it, though they say that everything changes so fast over here. I find I don't remember anything, for my recollections of our voyage to Europe, so many years ago, are exceedingly dim; I only have a painful impression that mamma shut me up for an hour every day in the state-room, and made me learn by heart some religious poem. I was only five years old, and I believe that as a child I was extremely timid; on the other hand, mamma, as you know, was dreadfully severe. She is severe to this day; only I have become indifferent; I have been so pinched and pushed-morally speaking, bien entendu. It is true, however, that there are children of five on the vessel today who have been extremely conspicuous-ranging all over the ship, and always under one's feet.

The American is a novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1876-1877 and then as a book in 1877. The novel is an uneasy combination of social comedy and melodrama concerning the adventures and misadventures of Christopher Newman, an essentially good-hearted but rather gauche American businessman on his first tour of Europe. Newman is looking for a world different from the simple, harsh realities of 19th-century American business. He encounters both the beauty and the ugliness of Europe, and learns not to take either for granted. The core of the novel concerns Newman's courtship of a young widow from an aristocratic Parisian family.

Master storyteller Henry James transports readers to New England in the 1870s for his satire of the American women's rights movement. Charismatic speaker Verena Tarrant is at the center of an acrimonious struggle between two distant cousins. Olive Chancellor sees Verena as a potential leader of the suffragettes and jealously attempts to isolate her prot g e from the society of men. The man Olive particularly abhors is cynical Southern lawyer Basil Ransom, who seeks a conventional marriage with Verena. The rivalry between liberal Olive and conservative Basil for Verena's attentions and loyalty forms a compelling tale of politics, feminism, and a nascent lesbian attraction. Set in the decade following the Civil War, The Bostonians offers a fascinating portrait of its era, particularly in its reflection of women's social roles. James's highly visual descriptions of town and country scenes complement the abstractions of his characters' attitudes and arguments, and the narrative abounds in his customary acute insights and subtle irony.

World-renowned novelist and short story author Henry James offers practical advice and considerable insight on what makes quality fiction, and how good writers can create it. A common theme seen in Henry James' works is contrasting the naivete and untrammeled freedom of the New World with the knowledgeable but corrupt nature of Europe and the Old World. Beginning with short stories while in his 20s, James quickly gained a reputation as a skilled wordsmith and compelling narrator. His innovative style was emblematic of new forms of penmanship which partly displaced and partly accentuated the prevalent Romantic and Victorian literary forms. Much of Henry James teaching contains his opinions on the nature and purpose of fiction. His theories about what a novel should present - as entertainment, as art, and as a reflection upon the author - offer readers thoughtful and informed analysis of creative writing.

World-renowned novelist and short story author Henry James offers practical advice and considerable insight on what makes quality fiction, and how good writers can create it. A common theme seen in Henry James' works is contrasting the naivete and untrammeled freedom of the New World with the knowledgeable but corrupt nature of Europe and the Old World. Beginning with short stories while in his 20s, James quickly gained a reputation as a skilled wordsmith and compelling narrator. His innovative style was emblematic of new forms of penmanship which partly displaced and partly accentuated the prevalent Romantic and Victorian literary forms. Much of Henry James teaching contains his opinions on the nature and purpose of fiction. His theories about what a novel should present - as entertainment, as art, and as a reflection upon the author - offer readers thoughtful and informed analysis of creative writing.

Often overlooked by modern critics, The Reverberator was a departure from Henry James' immediately preceding novels, The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima, returning to the popular 'international theme' of his earlier fiction. Its comedy of manners explores the conflicting values of American and Europeanized characters in the context of topical cultural concerns. Most notably, in its satire on popular journalism and an emerging mass-media through the scandal sheet 'The Reverberator', the novel dramatizes what James presciently saw as the 'devouring publicity' of modern life. This edition, based on the most reliable of the work's first book appearances (Macmillan, 1888), provides a thorough account of the novel's sources and composition, literary and historical contexts, and extensive revision for the New York Edition (1908), as well as extensive annotation. It will be of interest to James scholars, students of nineteenth-century Anglo-American literature and culture, and historians of journalism and new media.

In the decade after the Civil War, a cynical southern lawyer gets sucked into a role-confused, quasi-love triangle with his liberal Bostonian cousin and a rising star in the burgeoning women's rights movement. It's 1875 and Basil Ransom, a young lawyer from Mississippi, receives an invitation from his free-thinking cousin, Olive Chancellor, to come visit her in Boston. He does not realize how much Olive has changed since he last saw her, or that she has become (what we would now call) a feminist, deeply committed to the liberation of women in a society in which they are still largely held in thrall to male relatives. So, not surprisingly, when Basil arrives she immediately takes him to one of her suffragette meetings. The speaker is a woman named Verena Tarrant. She is attractive and magnetic, while seemingly not all that aware that she is either, and both Basil and Olive find themselves enchanted by her.

When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with modern audiences.

"The Real Thing" is a short story by Henry James, first syndicated by S. S. McClure in multiple American newspapers and then published in the British publication Black and White in April 1892 1] and the following year as the title story in the collection, The Real Thing and Other Stories published by Macmillan. This story, often read as a parable, plays with the reality-illusion dichotomy that fascinated James, especially in the later stages of his career. For the illustrator who narrates the story, the genuine article proves all too useless for his commercial purposes. The story portrays the unfortunate victims of a society in which reality and representation are closely intertwined in ways that make art a difficult project to untangle the two.

The American by Henry James. The American is a novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1876-77 and then as a book in 1877. The novel is an uneasy combination of social comedy and melodrama concerning the adventures and misadventures of Christopher Newman, an essentially good-hearted but rather gauche American businessman on his first tour of Europe. Newman is looking for a world different from the simple, harsh realities of 19th-century American business. He encounters both the beauty and the ugliness of Europe, and learns not to take either for granted. The core of the novel concerns Newman's courtship of a young widow from an aristocratic Parisian family. In 1868, Christopher Newman, an American businessman, visits Europe on a Grand Tour. Having worked for a living since age ten, he has made a large fortune and retired in his thirties, and is now looking to settle down and get married.