Henry James

The Two Magics is an 1898 book by Henry James in which are collected two stories, The Turn of the Screw and Covering End. The Turn of the Screw first appeared in serial form (in Collier's Weekly), from 27 January to 16 April 1898, becoming an instant classic, praised by Oscar Wilde as a "most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale, like an Elizabethan tragedy. I am greatly impressed by it." The ODNB calls it one of James's "great successes," and one critic recently anointed it "the greatest ghost story ever written." It is a terrifying and unsettling tale, "about the apparent haunting of a governess's young charges by a pair of ghostly servants who may have contaminated their innocence

He was not one for terror, or even horror. His fiction is impressionistic, psychological, and "courtly," but it has one pervasive emotion to it: unease -- discomfort, awkwardness, and a lurking shame buried in intentional secrecy. The fear of truth. The terror of exposure, of reality and confrontation. Henry James has long been heralded as a master of transatlantic realism, a cosmopolitan observer of human nature, and a bone-dry contributor to the novel of manners - a blue-blooded chronicler of polite society's stifled human dramas in the tradition of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Balzac, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Kipling, and de Maupassant - a thoroughly European pedigree befitting a man who left the United States in his youth and returned only twice before his death. And yet, for all his love of manners, whit, upper middle class malaise, and psychological realism, James returned time and time again throughout his career to a genre which seemed so at odds with his oeuvre: the Gothic ghost story. His most famous and influential supernatural tale, The Turn of the Screw, is considered by many - including Stephen King - to be the exemplar of the ghost story: a tale of haunted children, demonic possession, sexual frustration, and psychological terror. But this was not a one hit wonder: James wrote eighteen weird tales - most of which were ambiguously supernatural, and the best of this output is included in this volume - phantom women in black veils, haunted clothes guarded by a jealous ghost, evil doppelgangers with mutilated fingers, murderous portraits which ensure the family honor, sexually-charged liaisons between the living and the dead, a spectral stalker haunting the woman who drove him to suicide, and more. TALES INCLUDED in this ANNOTATED EDITION: The Romance of Certain Old Clothes The Ghostly Rental Sir Edmund Orme Owen Wingrave The Way it Came The Real Right Thing The Third Person The Jolly Corner The Turn of the Screw

Exemplifying Henry James's famous belief that "Art makes life," The Lesson of the Master is a piercing study of the life that art makes. When the tale's protagonist-a gifted young writer-meets and befriends a famous author he has long idolized, he is both repelled by and attracted to the artist's great secret: the emotional costs of a life dedicated to art. With extraordinary psychological insight and devastating wit, the novella asks the question of whether art is, ultimately, demeaning or ennobling for the artist, while capturing the ambiguities of a life devoted to art, and the choices artists must make. The expatriate James knew these choice well by the time he published the novella in the Universal Review in 1888, and the work reveals him at the height of his powers.

The Bostonians is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Century Magazine in 1885-1886 and then as a book in 1886. This bittersweet tragicomedy centres on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's cousin and a Boston feminist; and Verena Tarrant, a pretty, young prot g e of Olive's in the feminist movement. The storyline concerns the struggle between Ransom and Olive for Verena's allegiance and affection, though the novel also includes a wide panorama of political activists, newspaper people, and quirky eccentrics. Mississippi lawyer and Civil War veteran, Basil Ransom, visits his cousin Olive Chancellor in Boston. She takes him to a political meeting where Verena Tarrant delivers a feminist speech. Ransom, a strong conservative, is annoyed by the speech but fascinated with the speaker. Olive, who has never before set eyes on Verena, is equally fascinated. She persuades Verena to leave her parents' house, move in with her and study in preparation for a career in the feminist movement. Meanwhile, Ransom returns to his law practice in New York, which is not doing well. He visits Boston again and walks with Verena through the Harvard College grounds, including the impressive Civil War Memorial Hall. Verena finds herself attracted to the charismatic Ransom.

Henry James wrote the long short story "The Madonna of the Future" (1873) at the age of thirty, but although it features his early, relatively straightforward style, it is subtle in the way it combines its themes: America's discovery of Europe, the American artist's particular challenges, the representations of woman in art (as contrasted with actual women), and the plight of the cerebral and tentative artist who wraps himself in preparatory notes and theorizing, afraid to begin the work which summons him now. The narrator is a Mr. H-, an American, "a clever man who had seen much of men and manners," who relates an after-dinner story of an artist he met during his first trip to Italy. While taking a walk his first night in Florence, he encounters Theobald, another American, a painter, who guides him-on this night and subsequent nights-to some of the great artistic wonders of the city.

The Complete Volumes I and II of The Portrait of a Lady. The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880-81 and then as a book in 1881. It is one of James's most popular long novels and is regarded by critics as one of his finest. The Portrait of a Lady is the story of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who, in "confronting her destiny", finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. Like many of James's novels, it is set in Europe, mostly England and Italy. Generally regarded as the masterpiece of James's early period, this novel reflects James's continuing interest in the differences between the New World and the Old, often to the detriment of the former. It also treats in a profound way the themes of personal freedom, responsibility, and betrayal.

The stories included here are Brooksmith The Real Thing The Story of It Flickerbridge Mrs. Medwin

The Complete Volumes I & II of The Letters of Henry James. Henry James, OM was an American author regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of renowned philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for a number of novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between emigre Americans, English people, and continental Europeans - examples of such novels include The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often made use of a personal style in which ambiguous or contradictory motivations and impressions were overlaid or closely juxtaposed in the discussion of a single character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to impressionist painting. In addition to voluminous works of fiction, James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man and eventually settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916.

The Turn of the Screw, a novella by Henry James, is part of gothic and ghost story genres. Due to its original content, The Turn of the Screw became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive. Many critics have tried to determine the exact nature of the evil hinted at by the story. However, others have argued that the brilliance of the novella results from its ability to create an intimate sense of confusion and suspense within the reader.

Henry James (Nueva York, 15 de abril de 1843-Londres, 28 de febrero de 1916) fue un escritor y critico literario estadounidense, nacionalizado britanico al final de su vida, que es conocido por sus novelas y relatos basados en la tecnica del punto de vista, que le permite el analisis psicologico de los personajes desde su interior.

Adam Verver, un rico viudo norteamericano retirado de los negocios, recorre Europa con su hija Maggie comprando y coleccionando antig edades. Cuando Maggie conoce y se enamora de Americo, un pr ncipe romano rico en apostura y linaje, mas no en fortuna, su padre se lo "compra" como le ha comprado todo cuanto le ha gustado en la vida, al tiempo que l mismo adquiere, para sus segundas nupcias, una atractiva, y tambi n pobre, muchacha norteamericana, Charlotte Stant. Charlotte es amiga de Maggie y es tambi n amiga del Pr ncipe: su amistad con ste se remonta a un tiempo en que la pobreza parec a condenarlos a no unirse jam s. Ahora vuelven a encontrarse en el lujo y la holgura, pero si las antiguas trabas han desaparecido es s lo gracias a aquellos con quienes se han casado... Un espl ndido juego de variaciones sobre las posibilidades de este singular m nage a quatre constituye y articula la que hubo de ser la ltima novela completa de Henry James, "un drama maravillosamente luminoso" en palabras de Gore Vidal, en el que el conocimiento es "tanto fascinaci n como temor

The Turn of the Screw is a short novel or a novella written by American writer Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and film adaptation. Due to its ambiguous content and narrative skill, The Turn of the Screw became a favorite text of New Criticism. The account has lent itself to dozens of different interpretations, often mutually exclusive, including those of a Freudian nature. Many critics have tried to determine what exactly is the nature of evil within the story.

The Real Thing and Other Tales By Henry James

Hawthorne is a book of literary criticism by Henry James published in 1879. The book was an insightful study of James' great predecessor, Nathaniel Hawthorne. James gave extended consideration to each of Hawthorne's novels and a selection of his short stories. He reviewed Hawthorne's life and some of his nonfiction. The book became somewhat controversial for a famous section where James enumerated the items of novelistic interest he thought were absent from American life.