Product Description
"The Turn of the Screw" is an intense psychological tale of terror. It begins in an old house on Christmas Eve. It is the story of a Governess who comes to live with and take care of two young children. The Governess loves her new position in charge of the young children, however she is soon disturbed when she begins to see ghosts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Weird
This little book started off very slowly as the diary of a governess of two children at a country estate.She sees apparitions of her dead predecessor and another dead hired hand and thinks that they are trying to take the children away with them to the other world.She keeps her eye on the children constantly to protect them from this evil.The first half to two-thirds of the book is very wordy, repetitive with convoluted language, often making no sense, full of unnecessary adverbs. It seems like very poor writing until you put it in context: it was written by a mentally disturbed woman who is describing her life and situation.Near the very end, the action does pick up once her insanity begins to emerge.The two children, who first loved her, become fearful of her; a servant takes the little girl away to protect her, leaving the little boy alone with the batty governness.I won't spoil the end but it's not for the faint of heart.I liked "Daisy Miller" better I think, but Henry James does tend to put an odd spin on things. ... Read more

Product Description
For the first time in 30 years, the Master's complete stories are again available--in a handsome, authoritative collector's edition

With this fifth and final volume of The Library of America's historic new edition, Henry James's world-famous stories are again available in their entirety.

Complete Stories 1864-1874 brings together his first 24 published stories, 13 never collected by James. Here are the first explorations of some of James's most significant themes: the force of social convention and the compromises it demands; the complex and often ambiguous encounter between Europe and America; the energies of human passion measured against the rigors of artistic discipline. Encompassing a wide range of subjects, settings, and formal techniques, these stories show the young James exploring contemporary events, as in three stories that treat the effects of the Civil War on civilians, and exhibiting his famous psychological acuity, as in "Guest's Confession," where the ferociously comic portrayal of an arrogant businessman hints at the narcissism and sadism that motivate him. Early examples of James's lifelong fascination with art and artists include "A Landscape Painter," which explores a young painter's distorted attraction to a family living in a desolate coastal town, and "The Madonna of the Future," where an aging artist avoids the inevitable unveiling of his "masterpiece." Adumbrating later triumphs, and compelling in their own right, the stories in this volume reveal an accomplished young talent mastering the art of the short story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The master's early years
This is an approach to the Henry James continent from the most accessible coast: the first decade of stories, published between 1864 and 1874. I give 5 stars to this volume because of the enjoyment that it gives me. Not that the average of all stories would really be so high, but getting to know the early James in the beautiful LoA volume is just fun.

These early tales are mostly entertaining and sparkling, with clever narrative structures, smart plots, and real people. Many of the narrators talk to us like from across the coffee table. Society, conventions, expectations, restrictions, ambitions, conflicts are what these stories are about. This is not slow ponderous prodding, but witty and satirical. It is also sometimes gothic and romantic. I had not realized before that one of James's roots taps into Poe territory.
This is the world of New York, New England and Western Europe, with a social focus on upper strata and bohemians. No social conflicts here, no class struggle, just individual ones. No major historical trends or events. Civil War or French Revolution are just wall paper, not part or subject of the stories. Is that a flaw? Not necessarily, not unless we expect every writer to be at home everywhere or to write about things that he doesn't know about.
Many of the stories were not previously included in collections, and that is just as well with some of them. Some are just silly. Some are too touristy to be good, i.e. plots are wrapped in travel tales about England, France, Switzerland, or Italy. Some are too theoretical, almost treatises on art history and theory, with a plot added almost like an afterthought. Then again, others that I thought great or nearly so, have remained uncollected. Clearly I do not always agree with James' own opinion about his stuff.

In general I prefer the quiet psychological stories over the esoteric or melodramatic or touristy ones. James' strength was not in excitement but in close observations and dissection. I must admit though that his bad guys are quite good and convincing.

The narrator frequently knows far too much for the good of his people, or for his own plausibility. That may be a disease of the time, but it does not suppress the enjoyment.
In the very early stories, an all-knowing background voice manipulates the mind of more than one protagonist. Later James seems to focus on his main character and stays away from knowing everything. He often uses the second narrator device, i.e. the first narrator hears a story from a second one. Several narrators are part of the story and some are less than heroes. One is a clear case of a sleazebag, another one seems to be proud of his blackmailing success.

Here follows a short characterization of each story in volume 1. I made it a point to squeeze each text into one line, just for fun.
1. A Tragedy of Error: trivial tale of adultery, murder and confused identity.
2. The Story of a Year: young woman gets into trouble with promises made.
3. A Landscape Painter: rich young man pretends to be poor and gets snared.
4. A Day of Days: two young people contemplate testing the limits.
5. My Friend Bingham: man, involved in death of a little boy, falls in love with mother.
6. Poor Richard: rich woman has wrong information and chooses wrong suitor.
7. Story of a Masterpiece: rich man commissions his fiancée's ex to paint her portrait.
8. Romance of Certain Old Clothes: sisterly love, jealousy, and ghostly revenge.
9. A Most Extraordinary Case: difficult healing process of a wounded civil war colonel.
10. A Problem: fortune telling trouble (if this were HJ's standard, I would quit here).
11. De Grey: supernatural story of a family curse; this one is also a failure.
12. Osborne's Revenge: man wants to revenge friend's suicide against assumed jilter.
13. A Light Man: cynical scoundrel angles for the inheritance of a wealthy man.
14. Gabrielle de Bergerac: poor aristocratic woman chooses plebeian suitor.
15. Traveling Companions: young American travels in Northern Italy and meets girl.
16. A Passionate Pilgrim: American loser comes to grief in England.
17. At Isella: American tourist helps Italian woman run from bad marriage.
18. Master Eustace: monstrous tale about a spoiled brat of a son.
19. Guest's confession: a bully, an embezzler, and a blackmailer.
20. The Madonna of the Future: insensitive tourist dashes failed artist's delusions.
21. The Sweetheart of M.Briseux: woman remembers how she fell out of love (the only female narrator in the volume!); one of the uncollected stories that I like a lot.
22. The Last of the Valerii: dug up Juno turns lukewarm Catholic count into pagan.
23. Madame de Mauves: cynical French aristocracy snares innocent American wealth.
24. Adina: stunning revenge of the underdog.

Each story is unique
Most of us discover Henry James in an English or American Literature class.I don’t think that I appreciated Henry James’ stories a student.He required too much attention from me as a reader.Now I continuously marvel at the two things that make him such a joy to read… 1.He writes so well.He has to be read slowly; every word counts; every sentence leads inevitability to the next; every paragraph is complete, and 2.He has so much to say.Each story is unique.Unlike many lesser writers, Henry James never repeats himself.He never wastes his talent.

A previous reviewer states that some of these stories are amateurish.I fail to see that.It was such a pleasure to read even his first story, A Tragedy of Error, which was published unsigned.Its main characters are a woman and her lover.The woman’s long absent husband is about to return, and they are about to be discovered.In just 22 pages, we can feel their fear of discovery and their evil as the lovers plot the husband’s murder.

In comparison, The Madonna of the Future, is a serene story set in Florence, Italy.It is told in the first person singular, with the narrator presented as an observer until close to the end.He encounters a painter whose masterpiece is much talked about but not seen.He quietly befriends Theobald, the painter, and through him meets the model for the Madonna, Serafina.Unintentionally, the narrator is a catalyst for the final actions of Theobald.The ending is compassionate, but as much of a surprise as that in A Tragedy of Error.

Other stories include sweet characters that turn out to be manipulative gold diggers, spoiled children who control loving parents, and polite fiends.Many of these characters have secrets that need to be disclosed to the reader; some are just romantic.Some characters behave well; many do not.James writes mostly of the upper classes, excessively polite, judgmental, repressed, and full of secrets.

This volume contains his earliest stories.I’ve never read a review that holds any of these stories to be a masterpiece.But James is such a brilliant writer that any of his work is worth the time to read.I highly recommend this volume as a start.

I tried to read this entire volume, I really did
I received a copy of this volume unexpectedly. It crossed my path as if it were inserting itself in my life, so I felt duty-bound to work my way through it. I confess to a prejudice against James' work. During graduateschool, one of my seminars required a close reading of Portrait of a Lady,and I found the entire experience unpleasant in the extreme. At the time, Ithought that James was a snob, an elitist, and a reactionary. Try as Imight, I could not develop an interest in idle upper-class characters whospend their time forming constant intrigues.

Thus, I approached thisvolume with a bit of trepidation, with a feeling that this was something Ihad to do. It reminded me somewhat how I felt in certain courses ingraduate school when the professor would do all in his (or her) power tomake sure that literature was more a burden than a joy. I was surprised byhow much I liked most of the stories I read. There is an element ofuniversality in many of James' stories, and they did not seem as dated as Iwas expecting. Perhaps the biggest surprise to me was a ghost tale or two,as well as a story about people trying to outdo a seer's prophecy. One ofthe most unusual bases for a love story has to be James' tale of a couplewho meet when the man accidentally shoots and kills the woman's sicklychild.

Some of James' descriptions are wonderful, and some of thecharacters memorable. For all that, about two-thirds of the way through themore than 900 pages of this volume, I simply could not read any more. Ifelt considerable relief when I placed the volume inside its dust cover andfound it a nice place to rest in my library. I do not imagine the pageswill see the light of day for quite some time.

Even after reading most ofthis volume, I am not a fan of James' work. He is undoubtedly an Americanmaster, but I just do not find his stories all that interesting. The onlyway I would read more of his work would be under the compulsion of beingenrolled in another graduate seminar (not likely!).

I respect James'accomplishment, but I just do not like his work.

A good place to begin
This book, which collects the first ten years of Henry James' short stories is, I think, a good place to begin with James--after all, it's where he himself started.The stories vary in quality, and some of the earliest are rather amateurish compared to later James, but each has itsrewards, and in reading them you can experience the development of a trulyremarkable writer.Story by story it's a pleasure to read his almostliquid descriptions of people and places.Once in a while he almost seemssurreal, as in this sentence from a story about the Civil War that he wrotein his early 20s: "The blood that has been shed gathers itself into avast globule and drops into the ocean."Some of the stories are ghosttales rather in the line of Edgar Allen Poe, while others are romances orcharacter studies.James rarely gives us a perfectly happy ending, butonce in a while, as in the story "Travelling Companions," he letshimself write a charmingly Austinesque love story ending in marriage.

Theprice of this book is a bit high, but (...) it'sactually a bargain.As with all Library of America books, it's really theequivalent of at least 3 or 4 regular length books rolled into one.Byusing top quality thin acid free paper, they've somehow fit 960 pages ofHenry James stories into a fine quality hardback book not much larger thana thick paperback.It's the kind of book you can take with you on theplane, and without the dustjacket it looks and feels as 19th century as thework inside.I find reading Henry James immensely relaxing andthought-provoking, and I can strongly recommend this book to any James fan,or anyone who is ready to make the plunge.

A good place to begin
This book, which collects the first ten years of Henry James'short stories is, I think, a good place to begin with James--afterall, it's where he himself started.The stories vary in quality, and some of the earliest are rather amateurish compared to later James, but each has its rewards, and in reading them you can experience the development of a truly remarkable writer.Story by story it's a pleasure to read his almost liquid descriptions of people and places. Once in a while he almost seems surreal, as in this sentence from a story about the Civil War that he wrote in his early 20s: "The blood that has been shed gathers itself into a vast globule and drops into the ocean." Some of the stories are ghost tales rather in the line of Edgar Allen Poe, while others are romances or character studies.James rarely gives us a perfectly happy ending, but once in a while, as in the story "Travelling Companions," he lets himself write a charmingly Austinesque love story ending in marriage.

The price of this book is a bit high, but with your Amazon discount it's actually a bargain.As with all Library of America books, it's really the equivalent of at least 3 or 4 regular length books rolled into one.By using top quality thin acid free paper, they've somehow fit 960 pages of Henry James stories into a fine quality hardback book not much larger than a thick paperback.It's the kind of book you can take with you on the plane, and without the dustjacket it looks and feels as 19th century as the work inside.I find reading Henry James immensely relaxing and thought-provoking, and I can strongly recommend this book to any James fan, or anyone who is ready to make the plunge.END ... Read more

Product Description
This is a collection of James' later short stories written after 1900 and includes, "The Third Person", "Broken Wings" and "The Beast in the Jungle". The stories are comic in nature and deal with life's mute tragedies and lost opportunities. From the author of "The Europeans". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Jolly Corner; it's like new
The book was in excellent condition, and it was just what I was looking for.

Is This Guy for Real?
Taking Michael Crichton's word on Henry James is sort of like listening to Gary Coleman criticizing Olivier, or Milli (or Vanilli) carping about Mozart.

First of all, in the above non-review, the reader assumes we"want to be swimming through crystal water," whatever that means. Well, I've swum through enough crystal water, and come away after the readwith nothing.James's industrial strength extra chunky peanut buttersticks with me long after I've put it down."The Beast in theJungle" OR "The Jolly Corner," two novellas, eclipse andobliterate the entire body of Crichton's work.Simple as that.

"The Velvet Glove" is a great find - the limousine ride stuckin my mind."The Birthplace" is a riot, too.Try them-

What's the fuss?
Michael Crichton said of Henry James: "I hate Henry James. His stuff reads like a first draft." For a pop writer, was Crichton ever right!!! Henry James is incapable of getting to the point. Reading Henry James is like swimming through a pool filled with peanut butter, when all you want is to swim through crystal water. ... Read more

Product Description
This fourth volume in the Library of America edition of the complete novels of Henry James contains the four novels he wrote after a failed attempt to forge a career as a playwright on the London stage. Together they mark the beginning of the brilliant period in the novelist's career known as the late phase.

The Other House (1896) shows James incorporating an act of murder into the heart of his narrative. Long neglected, the novel is a fascinating glimpse into a very different side of Henry James, as he explores the violent implications of jealousy and possessiveness. In The Spoils of Poynton (1897), the artworks conserved in the manor house of the title become the object of a protracted power struggle between the mother and the fiancée of the heir to the house. The struggle, in this most tightly constructed of James's late novels, hinges ultimately on the sensitivities of a third woman.

What Maisie Knew (1897) recounts the aftermath of a divorce through the eyes of the couple's daughter. James adopts what he described as "the consciousness, the dim, sweet, scared, wondering, clinging perception of the child." Similarly experimental, The Awkward Age (1899) maps the interrelations of a large cast of characters, a group of old friends and their children, almost entirely through dialogue. The ambiguity of childhood innocence is central to both of these novels. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Intended for an extended shelf life
Compiled and edited by Myra Jehlen (Board of Governors Chair of Literatures at Rutgers University), Henry James: Novels 1896-1899 is the fourth volume in The Library of America edition of the complete novels of Henry James and contains the four novels written after James failed in his attempt to create a professional career as a playwright on the London stage. The novels include "The Other House" (1896); "The Spoils of Poynton" (1897); "What Maise Knew" (1897); and "The Awkward Age" (1899). Like all more than 150 titles published by The Library of America, Henry James: Novels 1896-1899 is printed on high quality paper, intended for an extended shelf life, and is a mandatory addition to University and College library collections. ... Read more

Product Description
From Boston's social underworld emerges Verena Tarrant, a girl with extraordinary oratorical gifts, which she deploys in tawdry meeting-houses on behalf of 'the sisterhood of women.' She acquires two admirers of a very different stamp: Olive Chancellor, devotee of radical causes, and marked out for tragedy; and Basil Ransom, veteran of the Civil War, with rigid views concerning society and women's place therein. Is the lovely, lighthearted Verena made for public movements or private passions? A struggle to possess her, body and soul, develops between Olive and Basil.

The exploitation of Verena's unregenerate innocence reflects a society whose moral and cultural values are failing to survive the new dawn of liberalism and democracy. The Bostonians (1886) was not welcomed by James's fellow countrymen, who failed to appreciate its delicacy and wit; but a century later, this book is widely regarded as James's finest American fiction, and perhaps his comic masterpiece. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

Satirist or Satyr?
Henry James was a bit of both, the mordant mocker of the society he loved to flee. Henry James was both more and less than a Man of his times; he was a demi-god of observation, aloofly scrutinizing the foibles of everyone around him, a perpetual onlooker perhaps because he never found a means to participate. I suspect he made many people uncomfortable, particularly later in his career when one might well have dreaded becoming a character in his next novel.

"The Bostonians" is an early product of James's observatory. At first glance, it's an elaborately funny satire of Brahmin Boston and its elite intellectual reformers. Note that "funny" contains "fun". The Bostonians is a FUN book! If more readers approached James expecting to have fun, there would be less misperception of his books as 'difficult.' For biting satire, the Henry James of "The Bostonians" could go round for round with his contemporary Mark Twain. But "The Bostonians" is also a pioneering 'psychological' novel. The narrative is certainly "third person omniscient" but James artfully fits that narrative into the mentalities of the two principal characters - Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom - as penetratingly as fingers in a glove.

Olive is a Bostonian of 'sufficient means', with access to the upper reaches of a class she despises. Bluntly -- though James is never blunt -- she's a man-hating closeted Lesbian. (Anachronistic qualifiers! But in a novel of 1884, the intimate portrayal of such a character's mind was beyond the skill of any other writer.) Olive is neurotically shy, perhaps agoraphobic, and acutely sensitive to any antipathy. She's also a mistress of manipulation, a clever, bitter, lonely woman, quite easy for the reader to dislike, and her interest in the young beauty, Verena Tarrant, is ultimately more selfish than idealistic. Olive is of course an ardent feminist, a 'suffragette', and her small circle of associates are recognizable as archetypes of the feminists of the Gilded Age in America. Curiously, Olive is also the character whose psychology most closely matches that of Henry James, the acute observer forever on the fringe of others' lives.

Basil Ransom is a Southerner, a veteran of the Civil War consumed with frustration at the loss of his plantation wealth, bitterly nostalgic for the chivalric ante-bellum way of life, though the ugly facts of the "peculiar institution" of slavery never seem to color his nostalgia. Basil is stately, tall, handsome, genteel ... and blatantly narcissistic, an impractical fool who fails utterly as a lawyer in New York City, a place he loathes. Nevertheless, he considers himself something of a reformer also, a reactionary prophet who imagines that his essays in fringe publications will somehow someday bring society to its senses and restore the gallant manliness of the Old South. He is, of course, scornful of feminism, a blatant male chauvinist (Anachronistic terms again!) who seriously argues that Verena's destiny is to be his ornament. Sly Henry James, nevertheless, presents Basil quite sympathetically; incautious readers might take the ardent male as the 'hero' of the narrative, might take his side in the competition he wages against Olive for possession of Verena Tarrant. Believe me, that would be a sadly superficial interpretation.

The apex of the romantic triangle in this novel is the immature beauty, Verena Tarrant, the prize for which Olive and Basil will wage their psychological battles. To be anachronistic once more, she is an 'abused' child, a victim of manipulative parents and painfully susceptible to manipulation from both would-be possessive lovers.

A hundred and some years have passed since James invented Basil Ransom, and it's difficult to imagine how readers might have perceived that prickly character in the late 1800s. Today, he seems odiously familiar, the stiff-necked die-hard reactionary, the Lost Cause mythologizer. His 'gentle persuasions' addressed to Verena are pure rant and cant; his little essays in reactionary ideology might have earned him a bright career on the Talk Radio of 2010. When I read "The Bostonians" first, in the 1960s, I'm afraid I was too green and optimistic to recognize the pertinence of James's insights into American character. I thought the book was a depiction of a quaint by-gone era. It's not. It's now!

[Beware! If you don't wish to know how the contest ends, don't read this paragraph!]
The celebrated last sentence of The Bostonians, which projects a future of 'tears' for Verena, is not ambiguous in the least, whatever any critic has written about it. Only a reader ludicrously ignorant of marriage and of abusive relationships could fail to comprehend that Verena will indeed have tears to shed. Her ardent deliverer, Ransom, will soon enough wallow in his own futility. Poverty and frustration will overwhelm him, and he WILL blame her. Ransom will become, in remarkably few unwritten pages, the brutal domestic tyrant and wife-abuser that we modern readers recognize implicitly in his character. In short, this is a tragic ending craftily disguised in the uproarious humor of Verena's elopement with the gallant Basil.

It's interesting to compare The Bostonians with another 'feminist' novel of the same decade, George Gissing's "The Odd Women", which also depicts involves a romantic conflict between a man and a woman of opposing wills. Gissing's novel is quite good, a well-crafted narrative with vivid and plausible portraitures, but it remains external. Next to The Bostonians, Gissing's work seems quite old-fashioned. When I first read The Bostonians for a college literature class, the professor declared rhapsodically that it was" the greatest novel of the 19th C." I silently scoffed then, but now I suspect he had a point.

May Be a Timeless Masterpiece [87]
Pitting a battle for the affection of a young maiden (Verena Tarrant), a sententious middle aged woman of Boston (Olive Chancellor) seeks to outwit her stultifying southern lawyer temerarious cousin (Basil Ransom).Watching in the crowd are a wealthy sister to Olive (Mrs. Luna) and a worldly philanthropist (Miss Birdseye).

The fight is not personal - but is about everything. Suffrage rights for women are the constant theme espoused throughout this tightly written novel which deeply delves into the complicated characters of each of the above-referenced characters who account for the vast majority of the printed pages,

Olive is the movement's champion, Verena its voice, and Miss Birdseye, its benefactor - emotionally and financially.Fighting the joint forces admirably seeking to have "their cause" become realty, southern educated Mississippian Ransom says, "Do you really take the ground that your sex has been without influence?Influence?Why, you have led us all by the nose to where we are now.Wherever we are, its all you." His fight is not to the movement, but to opine when drawn into the parlor room for response.

The discourse of this book reads easily - an amazing feat as it was written 120+ years ago. And, the in depth philosophical thoughts marvelously outline many of the characters' values. "The world was full of evil, but she was glad to have been born before ithad been swept away, while it was still there to face, to give one a task and reward."

The three people of concern are Basil, Olive and Verena. Like so many books of this time, the young man simply becomes entranced by this mysterious woman - a devilishly coy but powerful beauty. A "Zuleika Dobson" of the 19th century. And, the young woman bearing so much weight on her shoulders must ask, "Did she ask herself why she should give up her life to save a sex which, after all, didn't wish to be saved, and which rejected the truth even after it had bathed them with its auroral light and they had pretended to be fed and fortified?"Basil or Olive? Which friend canprovide happiness? Could both? Would neither?Would Verena be too pusillanimous to fight these forces which strained her professional and personal life?

Ultimately, this book asks more questions than it answers.As to the monumentally honorable and valiant effort for Suffrage, we ask: Is it soiled by Olive's financial and covert payment (payoff?) to Verena's parents?As to the Suffrage's representaive of retort, we ask: Are Basil's honest intentions overcome by his impervious refusal to accept women as equals?

This book's modern dialogue of a very avant garde issue in the 1880's makes the issues and statements seem as poignant today as they were when written. That amazingly difficult success is what makes this an identifiable and undeniable classic piece of English literature.

James In Top Form
In this outing, as with other of Henry James's novels, the reader will continually be bowled over by this author's knack for language, his absolute comfort at moving conceptual mountains (and plot) with precise bursts of verbal dynamite.

That said, James's zeal for describing his characters' psychological phenomena with scientific precision, can sometimes cause his books to bog down.James is sometimes simply incomprehensible -- he will be developing a thought, or a line of psychological action on the part of a character, and suddenly he will lose you in a welter of subordinate clauses and pronouns that seem to have become dis-lodged from their referents.This is a problem particularly in later James (which I would gloss as about 1885 onwards).

"The Bostonians" was written in 1885, so it is "early late" James, if such a designation may be used.The language is just beginning to move towards that absolute obscurantism which would become his primary mode of expression for "The Turn of the Screw" and "The Wings of the Dove", and away from the relative simplicity and relaxed wit of "The American".

Aside from the means of expression, James has probably never been cleverer about his portrayals of character.Depending upon your own opinions regarding feminism -- James's own are not made clear within the four corners of this book -- you will find Verena's self-created dilemma between her sense of duty to Olive (and her cause) and her feelings for Ransom to be comic, tragic, or an admixture of both.It is to James's eternal credit that he leaves such a question so open.

"The Bostonians" is like an old wine; you have to savor it, to mull over it a bit, pursing your lips at its complexities, sucking your teeth at its bitterness, smiling at last, with satisfaction over what you have just swallowed.

Interesting 20th Century take on the book
Haven't read the book yet, but now I want to.I watched a moderately good movie last week called THE CALIFORNIANS, and before returning it to the video store, I saw on the back that the story line was taken from The Bostonians by Henry James. (The story involves a brother and sister with the last name of Ransom, he a developer, sister, Olive, an eco-activitst, with a sweet young female folksinger caught in the rivaly between the siblings.Reading the synopsis of the novel, I could definitely see the connections to the movie. I am sure the book is better!)

****... almost *****
"The Bostonians", a novel from the middle period of Henry James' writing career, was apparently not appreciated for a long time. It is, in a way, not surprising, because the criticism of his contemporaries is very acute there. It is good, however, that later on this novel got the praise, which it undoubtedly deserves.

Set in Boston of the end of nineteenth century, after the Civil War, the book tells the story of Verena Tarrant, a fresh, innocent young woman of extraordinary oratory talent. She is a daughter of a "mesmeric healer", who trains her for performance. Verena can captivate the audience with her speeches, not necessarily because of their content, but because of her beauty and appeal. During one of the early private shows, she gets the attention of Olive Chancellor, a slightly older woman devoted to the cause of feminism. She befriends Verena, takes her under her wing (paying her parents considerable sums of money) and trains her to give lectures about suffrage and the freedom of women, hoping to live with Verena continuously, forming what was then called a "Boston marriage" (James' sister formed such union with another woman).

Unfortunately for Olive, at the same show Verena catches the eye of her cousin from the Mississippi, Basil Ransom, a conservative lawyer and a veteran of the civil war from the Southern side.He wants to marry Verena, which means the betrayal of Olive's ideals...

James again succeeded in portraying the typical society members with irony and wit. Interestingly, the female characters prevail in this novel and each of them is unique - wealthy and educated, but stubborn and limited in her artificial want of progress Olive, natural, innocent and, ultimately, silly Verena, Mrs Adeline Luna, Olive's sister, who, being a merry widow, represents everything what Olive despises, old Miss Birdseye, a precursor of the women's movement (based on a real figure, Miss Elizabeth Peabody), or my favorite, Doctor Prance, who is really the personification of the ultimate goal of the movement (she is a professional, no-nonsense woman), but sees the absurdity of Olive's actions very clearly. The only fully developed male character in "The Bostonians" is Basil Ransom; the other few are merely sketched types (like Matthias Pardon, the journalist, Henry Burrage, the Harvard boy, or Selah Tarrant, Verena's father). There are also many such sketched female types, which give in total an extraordinary array of figures. All the main characters are very human, not being unanimously good or bad, but possessing multifaceted, complex personalities. They are also not undoubtedly likeable or despicable, however, Verena with all her faults is probably the nicest, and Olive the most pathetic (James seems rather critical of the feminist movement in the form described in his novel, seemingly treating it as a whim of idle women from the higher class and opposing them reasonable women like Dr Prance; despite the obvious achievements of the movement which we see now, there is something to his opinion).

The historical Boston (the action takes place mainly in the city and its suburbs, Cambridge, the home of Verena's parents, and Roxbury, where Miss Birdseye lives; Olive lives on Charles Street - all the locations are introduced with their social meaning of the time; apart from that some events take place in New York City and on Cape Cod) is described amazingly (the Oxford World's Classics edition has also a city plan at the end), which adds to the historical value of the novel. The only flaw for the modern reader, used to the fast action, may be the slow pace and many descriptions of places, emotions, characters - this is the book which should be tasted with pleasure, not rushed through. ... Read more

Product Description
Throughout his writing life, Henry James was drawn to the short-story form for the freedom it offered him-and he made the genre his own. This new selection comprises both brief tales and longer works that explore James's concerns with the old world and the new, and with money, fame, class, and art. "Daisy Miller," "The Lesson of the Master," "The Real Thing," "The Figure in the Carpet," "In the Cage," "The Beast in the Jungle," and "The Jolly Corner" are included here, along with twelve others. Haunting, witty, and beautifully drawn, these stories are as rich and resonant as James's novels.

Edited with an introduction by John Lyon. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Selected Tales: classic stories by Henry James the Master of nineteenth century Anglo-American Fiction
Henry James (1843-1916) is known as a Master of Fiction. He wrote several major novels such as "The Portrait of A Lady"; "The Wings of A Dove"; "The Ambassadors"; "The Golden Bowl": "The American""The Tragic Muse" and other masterpieces of the literary art.
In this Penguin edition "Selected Tales" the editors have selected several of James' best stories. "The Turn of the Screw" his best known story is not in this collection but in another Penguin edition along with "The Aspern Papers."
Among the tales told by stortyller James are:
Daisy Miller-An 80 page exploration of James'theme of American and European cultural exchanges. James was known for his "international theme" living most of his long life in Europe. The tale revolves around the ingenuous and fetching young American virgin girl Daisy Miller and her contacts with the old world civilization and morality of Europe. The story is narrated by a worldly Amercan expatriate named Giles Winterbourne. The story ends in tragedy. It is one of James best and most readable tales.
The Jolly Corner is a ghost story dealing with a famous writer's return to his boyhood home.
The Figure in the Carpet deals with people seeking to find a secret formula to be found in a great author's work. Many critics have seen that theme to deal with James' homosexual lifestyle.
The Death of the Master, The Middle Years and several other stories deal with the life of an author and his/her legacy.
The Birthplace is a story about a guide who embellishes the truth about Shakespeare as he guides tourists through the famous playwright's boyhood home.
James deals with Americans abroad in European high society. He often uses foreign phrases in his works. The thin slice of humanity he examines with keen observation of their ways and morals is European aristocracy and rich Americans either visiting or living abroad.
His fiction abounds in secrets and ghosts haunting the minds of his narrators or major characters. James is adept at narrative but his language is often abstruse and hard to read.
Henry James will never be everyone's cup of tea. His works are psychological. While reading him you do get a better understanding of that enigmatic creature we call Man/Woman.
If you are a beginning student of James start with Daisy Miller and the other excellent works in this Penguin collection.

Yes, Five Stars Ladies and Gentlemen!
This collection cherry-picks from the many short-stories and novellas of Henry James - he wrote over 100 - and in one volume we are treated to the full range of the author's prodigious gifts.

Standouts include, "Daisy Miller", a story of innocence destroyed, with the touchingly willful Daisy one of his most vibrant and human creations; "The Lesson of the Master", where James cleverly gives us a foretaste of the best of O'Hara zingers in a super surprise ending; "The Jolly Corner", another ghostly tale about a man who discovers the self he left behind; and "Julia Bride" a favorite of mine, a late distillation of the themes found in his last major novels.

The contents are as follows,

Introduction
Further Reading
Henry James Chronology
Notes on the Texts

Four Meetings
Daisy Miller
The Pension Beaurepas
The Lesson of the Master
The Pupil
The Real Thing
Greville Fane
The Middle Years
The Death of the Lion
The Figure in the Carpet
In the Cage
The Real Right Thing
Broken Wings
The Abasement of the Northmores
The Beast in the Jungle
The Birthplace
Fordham Castle
Julia Bride
The Jolly Corner

Noted



Everyone will find favorites here, and for those scared off by the novels this set of stories is an excellent introduction.

Brilliant but dense
I'll start with the reason why I didn't give it 5 stars. This is the only work by James that I read and I found it to be incredibly dense, the language he uses, the imagery, allusions and devices he employs make for an incredibly difficult read. I've read some allegedly dense books in my time but his style takes the cake - I simply found myself skipping at least 2 of the stories in this collection because I just became utterly lost and bored. Of course there's a great chance that I'm the dense one.

On the plus side, James is incredible at creating worlds that explore the social and psychological dimensions, in a deeper way than almost any writer I've encountered. We see the contradictions, cruelty and sublimity of the human mind like never before. James is concerned largely with occurences in "polite" society, although the clash between this world and the general world sometimes forms the basis of a masterful story like In The Cage. The other thing I adored was his self-referentiality. So many of his celebrated long short stories are about fiction and about stories or the writing process. James is also the master of frustration: his best stories often focus around some secret or Grand Truth that's never revealed to the reader. We are resigned to the sidelines, watching the reflexions (James's spelling!) of the greater picture. But this makes his stories more appealing, not less, and turns them into classics.

I heartily recommend it to anyone who has the patience to delve into this immensely rich world of character and feeling.

If you're cruising for gay Henry, this is the place to go...
This great selection of James's tales includes several of his widely-anthologized and well-known stories as well as the brilliant but little-known novella "In The Cage." Perhaps more interestingly, readers searching for the James stories that Gay Studies scholars are always referencing will also find many of them here: "The Figure in the Carpet," "The Pupil," "The Middle Years", and others. If you're cruising for gay Henry, if you want to find the figure so carefully woven in the Master's carpet, this selection is the place to go.

The master at work
Henry James is one of the world's greatest masters of the long short story. The stories share many qualities with the great novels. They are often tales of consciousness and perception in which the heart of the action is in the mind's dramatic interaction with its experience of other characters. The language has complication and parenthetical grace. There is a consummate artistry and composition and the works build to theirclimax in a revelation of sudden perception and clarity. The fundamental feeling may be of a frustration in life which is somehow transcended by the power of Art.
Reading these stories is coming into touch with one of the first class minds of world - literature. ... Read more

Product Description
=== Book Screenshots ===

Preview what the book looks like in the product image gallery.
Note annotations are provided to describe each feature.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B00267T3JE/

=== Book Description ===

A complete commentary on the Bible along with the entire Bible itself!

Enhance your Bible readings with this timeless, concise Bible commentary from Matthew Henry.
Every book and chapter of the Bible is commented and cross linked to a complete built-in Bible.
Easily switch between commentary entry and Bible text and back again. For one low price your getting
a quality commentary text AND a complete easy to use Kindle Bible.

Designed by a Google software consultant, every aspect of this innovative book has been designed
to ensure fast and efficient navigation. The top links allow you to quickly jump between chapters or jump to any book.
While reading a commentary, all sections are linked to the exact Bible verses referenced.
The Bible verses in turn are linked back to the commentary. In this manner you can read the Bible chapter and read
its corresponding commentary when you see its verse number linked.

Try out the sample file. Stay within Genesis and Exodus as these are included in the 10% amazon provides
in the sample files it creates.

King James is included. More versions are coming very soon.

Kindle compatibility. This book is compatible with Kindle 1 , 2, 3 and iphone.

Thank you for your support. A lot of time was spent perfecting this title. God bless! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Probably useful for Mr. Henry's coreligionists, but virtually useless a scholastic reference.
I purchased the book as a biblical reference, hoping it would contain historical annotations.I should have done more research.Instead it contains Mr. Henry's anachronistic interpretations of biblical text that sometimes directly contradict the plain meaning of the very language upon which he is purportedly commenting.May be useful to those interested in Mr. Henry's take on17th Century British morality, but not very useful to anyone interested in making up their own mind about biblical text.I removed it from my Kindle.

Henry Rocks!
LOL! I have his Hardcopy Commentaries, BUT, this is one of my favorite things on KINDLE! Very easy to navigate! Please get the hardcopy set, but this is an inexpensive way to hit some "High-points, with Mr. Matt Henry" a TRUE GIANT of the BLESSED Christian faith! Blessings in Jesus Christ the Blessed Lord and Savior!

Great way to read a classic!
This Kindle Version is a Blessing! It is a wonderful tool to explore this GREAT Commentary!

More than a commentary--this is a great study Bible for Kindle
I already had Matthew Henry's esteemed Commentary on my Kindle, but in an edition that was difficult to navigate. As soon as I tried out the sample of this edition I knew I had to have it. The navigable contents page makes it easy to find a book of the Bible, and once there one can quickly go to the chapter or part of chapter desired and from there to the comments and back. It was a great idea to include the Bible text with this book. Thank you for making available an entire study Bible that is easy to navigate. It is definitely one of the most thoughtfully designed books for Kindle that I have yet used. ... Read more

Product Description
An unprecedented collection of the literary criticism of Henry James (in two volumes, Vol. 1: Essays, American and English Writers; and Vol. 2: European Writers and Prefaces to the New York Edition). More than one-third never before collected in book form. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The master at work
This is the most comprehensive collection of James' literary criticism ever assembled in one volume. It also contains the masterpiece 'New York Prefaces' to his novels.
James is one of the supreme artists in formulating an appreciation and understanding of what his art is all about. He sets the tone in fact for the literary critics who will come to interpret his work,(Leavis, Dupee, Edel et al.) a tone of civilized mastery and perceptive intelligence. A diligent cultured informed tone capable of the most refined critical distinctions, and yet with narrative power even in works of criticism.
James also is of course a master critic of the art of others, and this volume contains many examples of this, in his writing of Flaubert , Turgenev, Poe, Maupassant just to name a few.

One of the Best LOA James Editions
Of particular interest in this volume are James' reviews of Balzac and Turgenev, and the prefaces he wrote for the New York Edition of his own work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Misleading Advertisement
Why is Amazon listing this book, Henry James:Complete Stories 1874-1884 as available new? I ordered it in February and never received it.Amazon notified me frequently of continuing delays and, then, a few weeks ago cancelled the order, the book being unavailable.

I have since ordered a used copy and received it without delay!

The stories, of course, all five volumes, are perfection, delight, wondrous!The edition is beautiful and feels good to hold:print is very small and on thin paper but still easy to read.The hardback bindings hold the pages together securely yet allow the reader to hold the book open without a lot of effort. The little ribbon marker is a nice touch.

19 mini-masterpieces
The Library of America has published 5 volumes of Henry Jame stories, covering 1864 - 1910, and I'm hooked.Henry James has to be read slowly; every word he writes seems to matter to the story.He is a master craftmanof the English language, and can say so much without being explicit.

James wrote most of these 19 short stories while living in London andvisiting the continent.This volume of his stories starts with"Professor Fargo" and ends with "The Author of'Beltraffio'".But, perhaps the most famous of the stories includedhere is "Daisy Miller:A Study."Few, if any, of these storieswill disappoint a 20th century reader.

Unlike some fortunate reviewers,who have had careers as librarians or who have degrees in EnglishLiteratue, I started reading authors like Henry James on my own.Iapproach a author just for the pleasure of reading his/her work.I startedreading Henry James with these short stories and have graduated to hisnovels.At first his writing seemed slow and stiff.But, once I settledinto the cadence of his writing, I concluded that this suited the formalityof the upper classes he wrote about.Now, I can't seem to put down one ofhis stories until the end.

James wrote so much during his life that itseems impossible to read all that he wrote, but I think I'll try. ... Read more

Product Description

"A good up-to-date one-volume life of Henry James was long overdue; Fred Kaplan... has done the job splendidly with Henry James: The Imagination of Genius... Here, at last, is a thoughtful, balanced book to give us a consistent and persuasive account of the writer's life and his development as an author." -- Miranda Seymour, New York Times Book Review

One of the most influential novelists, Henry James led a life that was as rich as his writing. Born into an eccentric and difficult family, he left the United States for Europe, where he quickly became a fixture of the expatriate writing community. Fred Kaplan recreates the world of Henry James: his friendships with Edith Wharton and Joseph Conrad, his love of all things exquisite -- including exquisite writing -- and his quest for understanding human nature. As James himself advocated and would have wanted, this is an artful, dramatic biography, placing the chronological narrative of James's life in the historical context of his times.

"The twenty-one-year-old Henry James, Jr., preferred to be a writer rather than a soldier. His motives for writing were clear to himself, and they were not unusual: he desired fame and fortune. Whatever additional enriching complications that were to make him notorious for the complexity of his style and thought, the initial motivation remained constant. Deeply stubborn and persistently willful, he wanted praise and money, the rewards of recognition of what he believed to be his genius, on terms that he himself wanted to establish. The one battle he thought most worth fighting was that of the imagination for artistic expression. The one empire he most coveted, the land that he wanted for his primary home, was the empire of art." -- from Henry James: The Imagination of Genius

Customer Reviews (2)

amusing and wrongheaded
Fred Kaplan is a determined Freudian. His greatest joy appears to be linking James's novels, stories, and plays to his quasi-sexual relationships with his family. This is not entirely implausible, given the sexual oddness of most of the James clan. However, Kaplan could have written a much shorter and more engaging book had he refrained from prurient speculation that rarely adds anything to the elegance of James's work. He ought to have played to his strengths -- a devoted scholar of James's correspondence, he's pulled many amusing and enlightening bits from the great volume of letters James left behind. Particularly good fun are James's judgments on fellow writers like George Eliot and Flaubert. Who knew the creator of such beauties as Isabel Archer was so good at describing ugliness? For celebrity snark, circa 1910, check out "The Imagination of Genius." But for a decent biography, stick with "Henry James: A Life" by Leon Edel.

Henry James Not Seen
I've read a considerablenumberof Fred Kaplan's articles,
and am impressed by his insightful writing.Ialwayscome
awaywiththesensethathereis not only a thoughtful
writer, but also a good guy.So I bought his biographies of
Dickens and Henry James, andreadJames first.

It took me until page 387 to finally get holdofwhatwas
thematterwiththisbiography. IfI'mon, it's very
simple.Kaplan doesn'tlikeJames. Hedoesn't like the
man. Hedoesn'tevenseem to like James's works
particularly, or certainly as much as a Professor of English
wouldbe expected to like them.Or if he does, he's hiding
it pretty well. Onlyoccasionallydoesone see any real
appreciation of James's works.There isrelativelylittle
positive discussion of the luminous language,the
intertwinedsubtleties,the profundityofempathyand
insight,theremarkableevocationoftimeand place.
James'svariousstories,andeventhe great novels, are
dealtwithlargelyinterms of how much money James made
fromeach,orwhich of his familyorfriendsare
characterized there.

Buttheproblem isn't one of weak or wrong-headed literary
criticism. Itseems,rather, tobeoneofpersonal
antipathy.That is pretty odd, to say the least,sinceit
isdifficulttoimagine someone deciding to write a major
work on a major figurewithout at least a reasonable degree
of admirationandpersonalregardfortheman. Here,
instead,there is a strange undercurrent of resentment that
colors and shapes the slant, the emphasis, the
interpretationsofarangeofJames'sexperiencesand
choices.It isn't the resentmentof envy for the genius of
James's work.It doesn't seem to be about the work atall.
Rather,itseemstobeabout the way James chose to
live his life.There'snoroom here to carefully document
it, but I think a reader can readily see it by watchingfor
quotationsfrom a letter or note of James, and then looking
for Kaplan's tiny, very slightly jarring negative spin, each
tiny distortion piled on top ofthe last until, after a few
hundred pages or so, what's going onbecomesclearer.

Ihadread Toibin's graceful novel on James, which made me
want to read next a scholarly biography that told more about
the lifeofthisgentle,refinedmanwhosebeautyof
language reveals, with brilliant precision, what is actually
happeningbeneath the surfaces.I wanted to be able to see
more clearlywhatJamessaw. Kaplan'sbookisn't that
biography.I'm reading the classic work by LeonEdel,and
things are much better now.

I hope Kaplan likes Dickens. ... Read more

Product Description
An incomparable Henry James’s novel in a new edition

Featuring a new introduction, it is a brilliant and sophisticated satire of manners and morals in the best Jamesian tradition. The Wings of the Dove is an indelible take on the tragic love triangle in which two poor yet ardent lovers seduce a dying woman in the hope that she will leave them her fortune. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Count me out!
Henry James' lovers are more than willing to acknowledge the "difficulty" of reading, or shall I say, enjoying a James' novel.The first several positive reviews here on Amazon all make a concession to the fact that he is "boring" or "overbearing" or "difficult".While those reviews ultimately explain away those descriptors, somebody needs to embrace them, because Henry James is boring, overbearing, and as far as reading for pleasure goes, difficult.
This novel, as is every James' novel I have read, is as dry as a cat's tongue after its been licking sandpaper in a desert sandstorm.Humor? I'm not sure it exists in James' literary world.Action? Again, this may not exist.I read the description on the back of the book- "highly charged love affair"- and am pretty sure that the cover got put on the wrong book.Really? 250 pages of hemming and hawing amounts to "highly charged"?
There are several main characters, all of whom are dull and predictable and highly English (this is not a bad thing, but maybe the fact that James' writing is so blatantly trying to be English and I am not creates a gap I just cannot leap.There are some great English authors, but there also exists a certain type of boring writing that is markedly English.James' oozes this type of writing).I wanted to cry at times I was so bored.
I read a lot.I know you don't care, but I have read books more difficult than this, more diffuse than this, longer than this, more convoluted this.I have not read a book as utterly devoid of charm as this.
Seriously.Henry James- you either love him or hate him.

It's Not So Easy to Read People ...
... to 'read' their characters, I mean, or intentions, and particularly in a scripture, a stricture or structure if you will, of Life as a narrative wherein duplicity and evasion are pervasively 'read' as good breeding and proper manners, so that even those who persuade themselves of intimacy are liable to the misreading of each other's character, not to mention of their own, an ambiguity which is, of course, both the usual modus operandi of Henry James's later fiction - the illegibility, as it were, of each unto each other -and the essential topic of The Wings of the Dove. [It's not so easy to read Henry James, either, as that little parody of his style is intended to demonstrate. 'The Wings of the Dove' is undeniably -- indefensibly, some might say -- a 'difficult' novel. In fact, it's the epitome of what many readers dislike about James's work. It's as difficult, on every level, as anything ever written in English, short perhaps of Finnegan's Wake. The sentences are knottily syntactical, the whole narrative is manipulatively oblique, and the central theme appears to be that any interpretation of persons real or fictional must ineluctably remain provisional until proven wrong.]

The persons are six: the beautiful but penniless Kate Croy; the personable but penniless Merton Densher; Kate's purse-proud and domineering Aunt Maud; Lord Mark, whom I cannot characterize without serving up a 'spoiler'; Milly Teale, an American heiress of ineffable ... well, precisely of what sort of ineffability our author is loath to specify; and Milly's devoted companion Susan Shepherd. Each of them serves, in various portions of the novel, as the interior protagonist, the mind that the author purports to 'read' while perversely withholding any explicit insight. Their mutual deceptions and confidences -- all six of them have wildly inaccurate perceptions of their interrelationships -- remind me strongly of a six-voice polyphonic madrigal by Carlo Gesualdo. replete with false cadences, shockingly dissonant suspensions, and bizarre chromaticisms. It would be a disservice to the reader to summarize the plot of this novel; one is not meant to have a clear sense of its directions, let alone its denouement.

As I said, James withholds. "Withholding" is his strategy, I think, for compelling the reader to experience the 'illegibility' of existence moment by moment. Milly, for instance, is purportedly afraid that she has a grave illness. But is she really ill, or neurotically hypochondriac? And if really ill, how seriously and immediately? And can anything be done for her, ill or not? Don't wait for me, or for Henry James, to answer! Then there's the question of what to make of Kate Croy's unsavory father, the second personage introduced into the novel. Surely Kate's relationship to her father is the key to her character? Surely there's a secret in their past? But Kate denies Merton Densher's - and the reader's - right to enquire about it, and Henry james complies. Metaphorically, this book is like an unopened letter, tossed impulsively into the fire, which contained the very piece of knowledge that would make everything fall in place but which can now never be retrieved. In fact, such a letter WILL figure in the narrative. James is determinedly unhelpful, methodically vague, craftily obscure. Every adverbial thicket is part of his scheme to enmesh the reader in complexity. In short, he MEANS to make your reading painful. As my personal trainer says: No Pain, No Gain! That was, come to think of it, more or less what my college literature professor meant also, when he declared The Wings of the Dove to be a great novel.

Is it too arrogant of me to suppose that 'Wings' will perplex, annoy, and ultimately bore the average reader? Very well, I'll risk being arrogant. Even the above-average reader may find it hard-going. Some critics have asserted that it's James's best. James himself, in later years, regarded it as unsuccessful. It's tremendously ambitious, stylistically, structurally, psychologically. I admire ambition in a novelist.

She waited, Kate Croy...
The Wings of the Dove, on Amazon, has an absurdly low rating, much like most of James's other novels. To all readers seriously interested in purchasing a James novel for the first time, I urge you not to be frightened by all the reviews that say something like, "exhausting," "overrated," "flaccid," "unbearable," and so on. It's the eternal critique of James; the readers who find James "unbearable" are simply not meant to read James. They will forever bear a grudge against him, and we can do nothing about that.

If you're approaching James for the first time, know that "The Ambassadors," "The Wings of the Dove," and "The Golden Bowl," often referred to as the novels of his "Major" (late) phase, are his greatest works, but the style of these novels, while full of rewards, is challenging. There's no doubt about that. Use Amazon's "look inside" feature and read a few pages; if you're intrigued, by all means, buy the book. If you're turned off, don't buy the book, at least right now. If you're mystified but still interested, consider reading the books in a different order.

It may be a bad idea to start off your reading of James with "The Wings of the Dove" or "The Golden Bowl." These are works of an artistic genius who has been meditating on some of the same themes, ethical dilemmas, situations, and the representation of changing consciousness for a lifetime. As such, they are prose texts of great complexity, and readers need to expect that a novel written by a reader, writer and thinker of age 60 is rather different from the product of a man of age 35 or 40. Age often brings complexity: by the time we come to W.B. Yeats's last poems, for example, we are simply expected to know a few things about Yeats: Maud Gonne, say, some of his key symbols and poetic forms. I remember hearing Helen Vendler lecture on Yeats's late "Among School Children," she says: "this is a poem of a man, 60, who expects us to tolerate the well-stocked furniture of a 60 year-old mind." "The Wings of the Dove" is a novel of a man, 60, who expects us to tolerate the thorny intellectual and representational crises that have haunted his 60 year-old mind.

If you are interested in reading "The Wings of the Dove," which is a gorgeous novel of severe choice, eros, tragedy and liberation, but you are afraid to jump into the late James, I suggest you train yourself on some of James's earlier texts that are just as great but are a bit more accessible. "The Portrait of a Lady" (1881, written 20 years before "Wings"), is a great place to start; in fact, some consider it James's finest novel. "The American" (1877), though rather imperfect, is also worth looking into. Or you might read some of James's stories - "Daisy Miller: A Study" (1878) - is a thematic precursor of many of his larger novels. (Note: "The Turn of the Screw," (1898) while also great, is great for different reasons. It is a ghost story, and in this phase of his career, James was intrigued by the supernatural. So, while it is a great read, it is not in any obvious way a precursor to something like "The Wings of the Dove").

This is just some advice for new readers who aren't ready to plunge right away along with Kate Croy into the depth of a moral miasma. But if you feel ready, by all means, plunge! It is not for me to explain why you should read "Wings," but if questions of betrayal, knowledge, deception, innocence, experience, desire and transcendence interest you in works of fiction, then, what a lark, what a plunge is this text!

Knotty prose and flaccid insights never take flight
All I can say, Tania and Bill (previous reviewers), is that you're too kind. Not just "in today's market," Tania, are such flaws considered unacceptable, but in James's market as well...perhaps moreso then, considering the masters from whom he was taking his cue. That's why it's so astonishing to me that this thinly plotted, atrociously incomprehensible tangle of verbiage ever earned its reputation as a great work. Sadly, this was my first reading of James, and I'm powerfully dissuaded from wading any further into his inky depths. What a craven mess. I am a prolific reader and a lover of classic literature, including works by many authors James claims as influences. What George Eliot, one of literature's most supernaturally gifted interpreters of human behavior, would have said about this compendium of knotty prose, I can only imagine. Having ranted that, however, I'm still open to the idea that "The Wings of the Dove" is an egregious exception to an otherwise worthy canon: anyone care to recommend something by James that even somewhat succeeds? Having understood this to be his great masterpiece, I'm skeptical but game. Meanwhile, Tania and Bill, for a far superior example of American fiction in the immediate post-Victorian era, try Edith Wharton's brilliant and deeply moving "The House of Mirth," which appeared just three years after "Wings..." With the former, you'll occasionally re-read its sentences because you'll want another taste of their construction and underlying wisdom, not - as with the latter book - because you are trying to decipher their unintentionally elusive sense.

Overrated Work by a Great Writer
I had read about a dozen Henry James works before The Wings of the Dove - novels, short stories, and critical articles - and found them good to masterful. I thus had very high hopes for Wings, often hearing that it was one of his best pieces or even his masterwork. However, I was bitterly disappointed - more so than I have almost ever been with a book, and there are few I have enjoyed less. I will try to explain my disappointment so that I may both warn others and avoid being automatically dismissed by Jamesians.

Wings is drastically different from any James I had read because it is the first work of his last period, previously untouched by me. It and the novels immediately following - The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl, apparently in a similar style - are generally called his best. Those who like prior James works should be aware that there is little reason to think they will like this; it is not so much the opposite as an extreme version. James is famous for being difficult, complex, indirect, and vague, which has always been controversial; few writers fall more fully in love/hate camps. Such things are not to my particular taste but never previously bothered me; I generally found them interesting or even fresh. However, Wings pushes them nearly to absurdity. James is often said to shine a light around his subjects' edges rather than directly illuminating, but Wings does so to the extent that it hardly tells a story. The first two books are entirely prefatory, and the novel is nearly half over before the real story starts - to the extent that it ever does. It is incredible how little happens; to call the plot thin is a drastic understatement. The action could easily be summarized in half a page; the other five hundred are the worst kind of filler. James clearly put a lot of work into the unusual structure but later admitted it did not work - an admirably honest admission that almost no one seems to share. A very high percentage of the book is dialogue, but James is not content to let characters speak for themselves. He not only says what they think while talking but prefaces a large number of sentences with intrusive comments that at best add little or nothing and at worst distract or obscure. This often happens even in the middle of quotes. Even worse, he overuses certain phrases - "hung fire," "took it up" - to a criminal degree. All this is greatly annoying and almost fatally distracting. The dialogue itself is also a problem. James' brother William once told him that no one talks the way people do in his books; I immediately saw this as true, but it never bothered me. Here, though, the dialogue is so artificial that it is positively strained; it is very hard to believe that James expected us to take it seriously. What makes this so bad is that Wings is ostensibly hyperrealist. Adding to the problem is the lack of likable or even sympathetic characters. We may pity Milly, but even she is hardly likable, not least because she is overly self-pitying, however tragic; others vary from annoying (Mrs. Stringham) to thoroughly loathsome (probably everyone else). The (seemingly unintentional) lack of realism extends to the characters themselves. For example, Densher is supposedly a writer but is never shown writing, and his doing so is indeed hardly mentioned. Worse yet, he is ostensibly poor but seems to have unlimited time for society and tramps around the world with no apparent means of support. Perhaps the wealthy, upper class James was unable to portray or even imagine a truly poor person, but this does not pop up so grossly in other works I have read. Such things not only bring the book down but undermine its intention.

The problems boil down to James' indirection obsession. He seems determined not to let us see something interesting; maddeningly, the few significant events take place offstage. The idea is novel, even revolutionary, and James had used it to various extents before, usually with great success, but Wings abuses it so much that we can hardly be anything but frustrated. The dialogue is again a case in point. Characters virtually never speak directly of what they think or mean; this has some interest in that it demands close reading, and it can be fun to figure out at first, but the charade quickly degenerates into a one-sided game. James appears bent on making us work hard but gives very little in return. This extends even to punctuation; his overuse of commas and dashes borders on perverse, making the reading far harder than necessary. Few books are more difficult; I have read hundreds, perhaps thousands by a myriad of authors from all over the world and throughout history, but only a handful at most have been so wearisome. I lost count of how many times I wanted to give up, persevering only because my cheapskate ways compel me to finish a book after buying it.

This is not to say Wings is all bad. Characterization is strong, even superb, and the psychological insight is both vivid and valuable. James also does some interesting things with point of view, but we can easily debate whether they serve or harm the book. More importantly, such things, at least to me, do not make a book; they may add greatly but are insufficient in themselves. Relatedly, James does a good job of creating suspense; once the story finally gets going, there is a strong sense that something vast will occur and arguably even an overwhelming feeling of doom. This belatedly gives a reason to keep reading, but the problem is that nothing really ever happens; drama's near absence means Wings is extremely anti-climactic. That the book has been made into a play and multiple films is truly mind-blowing; adapting it requires not merely dramatization so much as making up the drama altogether. Wings is perhaps not beyond repair; the central idea that James' Preface tells us he was getting at is interesting, and he acknowledges that his execution is poor - though again few agree. A short story would perhaps have been preferable or at least a much shorter novel; those who make it through must feel as if they have run a marathon, and I fail to see how so many claim to think it worthwhile.

All told, anyone who likes earlier James is strongly cautioned; all prior major works should probably be read first. Those who dislike Wings would do well to avoid the next two novels also - though anyone who likes it is advised to continue. Certainly it should be no one's introduction; The Portrait of a Lady, Washington Square, "Daisy Miller," and some of the other major short stories are more typical and far superior in my view. Similarly, anyone unfortunate enough to read Wings first should not give up on James; I can hardly blame anyone tempted to do so, but he has much to offer. That he did not clip the novel's wings is highly unfortunate, but at least he had already soared high enough to spread them.
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Product Description
In the decades after the Civil War, how did Americans see the world and their place in it? Kendall Johnson argues that Henry James appealed to his readers' sense of vision to dramatize the ambiguity of American citizenship in scenes of tense encounter with Europeans. By reviving the eighteenth-century debates over beauty, sublimity, and the picturesque, James weaves into his narratives the national politics of emancipation, immigration, and Indian Removal. For James, visual experience is crucial to the American communal identity, a position that challenged prominent anthropologists as they defined concepts of race and culture in ways that continue to shape how we see the world today. To demonstrate the cultural stereotypes that James reworked, the book includes twenty illustrations from periodicals of the nineteenth century. This study reaches startling new conclusions not just about James, but about the way America defined itself through the arts in the nineteenth century. ... Read more

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THE ART OF THE NOVEL -Abridged - Henry James
Written by esteemed novelist Henry James to serve as both retrospect of his work and statement on his art.The resultis a consciousness raising journey into the creative mind of a genius.In the masterful voice of Henry James, narrative theory comes alive.

Every the fableist, James reveals in the first paragraph the seed of his work: "Addicted to stories and inclined to retrospect, the artist fondly takes his whole unfolding for a thrilling tale, a wonderous adventure."THE ART OF THE NOVEL" is a psychological and metaphysical treat.

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Volume: 2; Original Published by: B. Tauchnitz in 1878 in 317 pages; Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Psychological; Foreign Language Study / Japanese; Literary Criticism / American / General; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

Great Literature, an Enjoyable Read and Big Questions
Christopher Newman (Columbus and New Man) is a successful mid-career retired post-Civil War American industrialist in Paris seeking the best of the best.James creates fascinating characters, but they are somewhat stereotypical from a modern reader's perspective.The novel is a joy to read, even if it is slow to evolve at times.This is an accessable classic novel, without direct intrusions from the author's personal life, art or politics.This is a great work of cultural anthropology, providing insight into the declining post-revolution culture of France and the emerging American leadership class.It contrasts old world tradition, honor, family and politics with New World innocence, commercialism and naivete.The core love story is romantic and touching.James was one of the first to paint a picture of the possible end of civilization.The old world was scheming to hold on to its privileges. The new world had no deeper values than profits, activity, travel, imitation art and mindless pursuit of the best.The rich picture of characters and society does not overcome the final outcome, leaving the reader asking existential questions without answers (or even clues) as to how to live a good life in the modern age.

Great book
A great book.Old World versus New World subtlties.A quiet, stewing story reaches some high points with brilliant ideas of morality and fairness along the way.Virtue versus Tradition, Ambition versus Pride, Status versus Promise. If you appreciate ideas; if you appreciate characters and their circumstances, this book is for you. My favorite line of the book, about old money and old French aristocratic families: "Old trees have crooked branches, old houses have queer cracks, old races have odd secrets."You can smell the characters coming off the pages in this book.They come alive.Their weaknesses, their strenghts, their contradictions, their fates. No longer are characters developed, questioned, and identified with, in modern writing, as they are in a Henry James novel.Although James will spend three pages describing a scene in a restaurant, the foundation he lays in terms of characters and mood is unrivaled.One really becomes enthraled in the situation, and eventual outcome.If, for some thoroughly believeable reason, you find the writing to be taxing, and have troubles with the detailed descriptions, please press on.Let yourself absorb what the author is trying to tell you.Your reward will be having read a fine novel.

Don't hold your breath waiting for delivery!
It takes forever to come.I even emailed the owner and said I needed the book ASAP, still took 2 weeks to get to me.If they would have put it in regular mail right away if would have gotten to me within a week.Really disappointed.

The American is an early Henry James masterpiece
Henry James lived most of his life in Europe. When he was 36 years old
he wrote a novel about an American millionaire named Chrisopher Newman who was also 36. The novel of manners opens in Paris where Christopher
(named for Christopher Columbus) is enjoying his fortune, visiting art galleries and looking for a suitable wife. The Civil War veteran is a non-intellectual who is a version of an innocent abroad. He will join the countless characters in Jamesian fictions who are innocent Americans dealing with the old world culture of European sophistication.
Through a friend Mrs. Tristam he meets the Bellegard family. He falls in love with the enigmatic Claire Bellegarde courting her for several months. She agrees and then refuses to wedhim. Claire retreats to a nunnery in Paris. Claire had been "sold" by her family to the rich and old man Cintre but he has died. She is used as a pawn by her evil mother and odious older brother. The reader will learn why she rejects Newman, the secret of the Bellegarde family and gain an appreciate of what society was like in the 1870s in Paris.
A secondary plot deals with the young Valentin Bellegarde who fights a duel over a prostitute. He befriends Newman introducing him to his formidable mother and brother.
The book is very understandable "The American"is not like the later James works of
"The Wings of the Dove, "The Ambassadors", and "The Golden Bowl" with their dense prose and convoluted pyschological style of probing the consciousness of the major characters.
Henry James was a genius who sought to understand the human heart. In this novel of 1876 the master has produced a fine book. This book is a good introduction to the world of James. Recommended.

When Man Meets Woman, and Money and Social Status Clash . . .
What does a confident, energetic, single, self-made American millionaire do after amassing a fortune while still in his thirties?In the case of Christopher Newman, the good-natured, optimistic protagonist in Henry James' The American (published 1877), our hero (as James labels him) takes his money and makes on an extended visit to Europe, in search of culture, amusement and excitement to complement his exceedingly practical commercial past.The primary storyline centers on Newman's tireless efforts to marry a French woman, Claire, who is the woman of his dreams.Although the relationship goes passably well at first, despite obvious differences between Newman's straightforward American ways and Claire's aristocratic family, events abruptly take a turn for the worse about two-thirds of the way through the novel.Ultimately, Newman's "commercial side" is too much for the class-conscious Bellegardes to bear, and Claire is forced to reject Newman and retreat to the confines of a nunnery.

For anyone with an interest in understanding the clash of American and European society, values and culture, particularly in the late 19th century, The American is a worthwhile read.While the language and style of the work are at times a bit tedious, James' classic novel succeeds in elevating a common literary theme--man meets woman--onto a higher, more expansive cross-cultural stage.Though a happier resolution may have made for a more popular work of fiction, the realistic, less romanticized ending, with Newman pensive and melancholic and Claire cloistered away and out-of-touch in the nunnery, is exemplary of our universal human condition--a bittersweet affair in which openness and honesty do not necessarily win out over the inevitable prejudices, societal norms and sometimes even ill intentions of others.

One element of the story that I was hoping to find but did not was at least an inkling of how Newman, Claire, the Bellegardes or any other character in the novel go about finding a sense of "deeper meaning" in life.Newman has money but seeks an ideal wife.Claire appears to have the choice of marrying but is really being controlled by her family and ends up seeking solace (and maybe even emotional freedom?) in religion.The Bellegarde family have social status but are too embroiled in internal strife to be content.Beyond his cross-cultural (American versus European) social commentary, could James also be hinting that neither money, nor status, nor family, nor religion can bring us lasting satisfaction?If not any of the above, toward what higher objective should we all--individuals and societies alike---spend our waking hours striving toward?
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Turn of the Century Venice
Get the feel of romantic, rustic Venice through selections from letters and texts by John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Henry James and from period photographs. This is a gem of a book about a gem of a city at the moment between the old and new world. ... Read more

Product Description
The text reprinted in this volume is based on an examination of thefive printed versions of The American (first published in 1877) whichappeared in James's lifetime, and it is preceded by his "Preface to theNew York Edition" (1907).The textual history of the novel is traced in A Note on the Text; alist of substantive variants and emendations; a facsimile manuscriptpage showing James's method of revision; and a list of the installmentsof the novel as they appeared in The Atlantic.

"Backgrounds and Sources" includes relevant extracts from correspondence,reviews, and articles by James and others, and from his Notebooks andHawthorne.

"Contemporary Reception" of the novel is illustrated by twenty-oneAmerican and English reviews.

"Twentieth-Century Criticism" is represented in essays by Leon Edel,Oscar Cargill, Irving Howe, Richard Poirier, Royal A. Gettmann, andJames W. Tuttleton.

A Selected Bibliography is included for further study. ... Read more

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Why Did Nobody Mention ...
... when I was served a full course of Henry James in college, that his novels were deliciously funny? Satiric thigh-slappers! In his early novels like The American and The Bostonians, James's wit is sharper than Mark Twain's elbow or Oscar Wilde's tongue! I suppose my dear professors of literature were entranced and bemused by the subtleties of James the Old Pretender, in The Golden Bowl or The Ambassadors. The late Henry James had his merits, I will grudgingly admit, but the mere beginner James -- The American was only his third novel, and in his century 'three' was barely a start on a career of writing -- was a formidable genius.

The title-character of The American, Christopher Newman, is introduced, with sly condescension, as an awkward American, a westerner who has earned 'quite a bundle' in manufacturing and stock-jobbing. He's a caricature of the brash self-made democrat, confident and in fact intrepid, but aware of his own astonishing naivete and shallowness of culture. He's cashed in his chips, at age 38, and come to Europe knowing that he's looking for something more than 'success in business' but totally ignorant of what that something might be. In the course of things touristic, he sets out on the Grand Tour, a summer chasing culture from Amsterdam to the Alps to Venice, at the end of which he has little more insight than he started with. When he returns to Paris, it comes back to him "simply that what he had been looking at all summer was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not al been made by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers."

There are several other American stereotypes for James to make mockery of, in the early chapters of The American, but eventually our fledgling novelist gets down to story-telling. Mr. Newman discovers, rather to his surprise, that what he really needs to complete his successful life is ... a wife! Being a practical man, he determines the parameters - the job specs - of the woman he would choose to marry, and, since of course this IS a novel, he finds her promptly, in the guise of a Countess of the proudest French aristocracy, a woman whose family is staunchly Royalist and snobbish to a degree incomprehensible to a parvenu American millionaire. The novel picks up steam as it depicts Newman's bluff American 'shoot-out' with class-conscious Europe society and the romance of the manufacturer and the countess. As for the denouement of that romance, I'll leave you in suspense. Suffice it to say that, after all the Victorian 'novels of manners' -- Austen, the Brontes, Trollope, Eliot -- the possibility that such a novel might NOT end in the proper marriage adds a good deal of suspense and subtlety to the tale.

A caricature at first, Christopher Newman develops, or rather Henry James develops him, into a rather likable chap, someone for whom the reader cheers in his enterprise. And the more you like him, the more you'll like the book. He is, in the long run, the epitome of the best America has to offer in terms of honorable character. Henry James was seldom so generous with his male characters or with his American compatriots.

Must Read
This is a must read for any serious Enlish/Comparative Literature major. I am surprised that it still does not get read as much in college courses. I would even suggest this book for high school students looking to study abroad. READ THIS BOOK! You will thank me for it. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more