Product Description

This book collects, for the first time, Colm Tóibín's critical essays on Henry James. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel about James's life, The Master, Tóibín brilliantly analyzes James from a novelist's point of view.

Known for his acuity and originality, Tóibín is himself a master of fiction and critical works, which makes this collection of his writings on Henry James essential reading for literary critics. But he also writes for general readers. Until now, these writings have been scattered in introductions, essays in the Dublin Times, reviews in the New York Review of Books, and other disparate venues.

With humor and verve, Tóibín approaches Henry James's life and work in many and various ways. He reveals a novelist haunted by George Eliot and shows how thoroughly James was a New Yorker. He demonstrates how a new edition of Henry James's letters along with a biography of James's sister-in-law alter and enlarge our understanding of the master. His "Afterword" is a fictional meditation on the written and the unwritten.

Tóibín's remarkable insights provide scholars, students, and general readers a fresh encounter with James's well-known texts.

Product Description
Written in the form of epistles, the humour and wit of this work is irresistible. Letters from different characters who belong to different nationalities are included in the work. Each character has its own individuality and is drawn in detail. The story monopolizes the attention from the very beginning.

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Customer Reviews (1)

A Wonderful Classic Read
Certain books never get old and can be read again and again. This is one of them! ... Read more

Product Description
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

Customer Reviews (1)

Italian hours
V Interesting, comparing the Venice of James to the Venice of now is fascinating in that apart from the number of visitors it is v. v. similar ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
This Halcyon Classics ebook edition contains 16 collected novels of noted Anglo-British author Henry James, author of 'The Turn of the Screw.'Includes an active table of contents.

Contents:

Roderick Hudson
The American
The Europeans
Confidence
Washington Square
The Portrait of a Lady
The Bostonians
A Small Boy and Others
The Reverberator
The Tragic Muse
What Maisie Knew
The Awkward Age
The Wings of the Dove
The Ambassadors
The Golden Bowl
The Outcry ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An excellent collection of Henry James's greatest work in a good format
Halcyon has produced three collections of James's work: The Henry James Collection I: 24 Novellas and Short Stories (Halcyon Classics), The Henry James Collection II: 24 Novellas and Short Stories (Halcyon Classics), and this volume of 16 of his best novels. The first collection is, in my opinion, the cream of James's shorter works, and this collection is a very fair collection of his best longer works.

Halcyon has done a very good job of publishing these collections for the Kindle: the price is attractive, the texts are those finally approved by James, navigation is simple and direct from the table of contents, and there are relatively few typographical or formatting errors, at least in the 20 or so novellas and novels that I've read, in each case aloud to my wife, where errors are more noticeable than when I read for myself at greater speed.

The publisher has listed the novels in this collection in its editorial material; following is a list of the novels not included in this collection:

Watch and Ward (The rare original version!)(1871)
The Princess Casamassima (Penguin Classics eBook) (1886)
The Other House (New York Review Books Classics) (1896) [Not yet on Kindle]
The Spoils of Poynton (Penguin Classics eBook) (1897)
The Sacred Fount (1901) [Included with other novels on Kindle but not as a stand alone book]
The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors (collaborative novel with eleven other authors, 1908)
The Ivory Tower (unfinished, published posthumously 1917) [Not yet on Kindle]
Henry James' Last Romance: Making Sense of the Past and the American Scene(unfinished, published posthumously 1917)

It is impossible to review all of the treasures here; each of these novels has been written about over the past decades many, many times, and each is worth a separate review. But if you would like to understand the tremendous popularity of Henry James, you can do no better than collecting the three Kindle ebooks in the collection, and read as many of the contents as suits your fancy. In my case, it suits my fancy to read most of them, and more and more as I go on.

Robert C. Ross 2010 ... Read more

Product Description
Introduction by Denis Donoghue ... Read more

Customer Reviews (27)

THE GOLDEN BOWL is like VERTIGO
THE GOLDEN BOWL is like Hitchcock's VERTIGO. In both works, "bad guys" are found out and punished. In both works, the spectator can sympathize more with the bad guys (Kim Novak in VERTIGO, the lovers in GOLDEN BOWL) than with the good guys who defeat them. In both works, this has led to a certain lack of success -- critics of their time were down on both James and Hitchcock for these two works. It has also led to some people thinking they are the greatest things their creators ever did.

There's a lot of talk here about the difficulties of James's style. I'm on my third reading, and the style isn't difficult any longer. I always had fun with James's later novels, trying to figure out what each sentence and paragraph meant, and after a while they all became clear. Part of the trick is to have a dirty mind, and it also helps to have been at a lot of dinner parties where you had to talk scandal -- or even start an affair -- in very polite and tactful ways.

And everybody always knows, no matter how difficult your style is!

The deepest pleasures of a masterwork--but only for the mature, meditatively reflective few.
This last completed novel of Henry James, the third of his three culminating masterworks, is not for the reader who doesn't understand that there is a difference between high, difficult, art and pop art--and that the difference has nothing whatever to do with class or politics or social status, but rather with depth, complexity, subtlety, and virtuosity of articulated nuance.

The storyline is fairly simple (easy to look up), but what makes the book most rewarding, read after read, is the way that Henry James brings dramatically to life, with unexpected richness of texture, every feeling of passion, ambivalence, anxiety, and inner conflict of the Prince, his lover Charlotte, her husband (Mr. Verver),the Prince's wife (Mr. Verver's daughter, Maggie), and the Assinghams.

Like "Hamlet" or a late Beethoven quartet, one learns to savor "The Golden Bowl" through repeated performances--except here, the reader must do the performing, a daunting challenge that takes patience and a concentration of intelligence that few enough people are interested in cultivating or even capable of. What is the reward for essaying to make James's visionary work one's own visionary work? In a word, it is the life-enriching experience of what Shelley once called "transforming enlargements of the imagination."

More than I was up for, I think
The rating is for my own enjoyment of the book - not for its literary quality.

Henry James is not my cup of tea.Tea being an appropriate metaphor, as Mr. James could no doubt write fifty pages about how a woman holds her cup of tea with her pinkie finger extended just so, therefore indicating to the rest of the group her inner turmoils, her family history, and what she fed the dog for dinner.

He has a tremendous command of vocabulary, long, complex sentences, engaging characters but it is such a long, slow read for me I find myself having to go back to the beginning of sentences just to see what the heck was going on when he started them.

This book took me all month to read, with some personal time off causing part of the delay, and reluctance to dive back in the rest.I am sure it is my own failing as a reader, but from a pure reading enjoyment viewpoint, this did not do it for me.

Not for me, but...
"The Golden Bowl" (1904), written by Henry James (1843 -1916), is a book that many consider a classic. I read it many years ago, and decided to read it again after hearing a friend mention it, and realizing I didnt remember much about its plot.

The story is set in England, and its main characters are Prince Amerigo, Maggie Verver and her father Adam, and Charlotte Stant, Maggies best friend. Amerigo is an Italian nobleman that happens to be poor, and decides to marry the very rich Maggie in order to become wealthy. Maggie has a very close relationship with her father, and decides that Adam should marry Charlotte, so that he wont be alone. What Maggie doesnt know, however, is that Amerigo was the lover of her friend Charlotte. That seemingly small detail, that Amerigo and Charlotte go to great lenghts to hide, complicates the relationships of the four characters, and immerses them in a web of lies and simulation. Appearances and reality, what is more important? And what doesn a golden bowl have to do with all that?

If you are interested in finding the answer to those questions, and dont mind the fact that James style is somewhat baroque in this book, you might be interested in reading "The Golden Bowl". The descriptions are great, and the author excels at making you understand what these couples are thinking, and feeling. On the other hand, not much happens, and this is the kind of book that can be easily forgotten. That is what already happened to me once, and it is likely to happen again, at least to me. I dont recommend "The golden bowl", due to the fact that there are other books out there that are unforgettable, books that simply make you remember them...

Belen Alcat

PS: If you are interested in reading this book, please do so. "The golden bowl" was not for me, but maybe you will understand and appreciate it better.

The Golden Bowl: The Meaning of "Value"
Reading THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James can be either an exercise in frustration or of exhiliration. If after reading a few pages one deduces the former, then one has allowed an excessively convoluted and ornate prose style to interpose itself between a writer with a straightforward theme that is inextricably intertwined with a style that is its polar opposite with a reader who expects the straightforwardness of the theme to link with a parallel style. James uses grammar and syntax in much the same way that Milton does in PARADISE LOST.Reading James and liking James is an acquired taste. For the novels leading up to this one, one can almost argue that James was simply getting ready to write what is generally considered his master work.

The plot is relatively uncomplicated. A father daughter relation is exceptionally close. Their immense wealth insulates them from the mundane trivialities of life. Both are used to acquiring things of value: a painting, a house, and when need be, a husband for the daughter. Adam Verver is the father, a basically decent sort who has Midas type wealth, but is determined to use it to make his daughter happy, a state of mind that is no more different--or more expensive--than acquiring anything else. Maggie is the daughter, also a good hearted woman who has learned from her father that value must be exchanged for value. Enter Prince Amerigo, a titled but impoverished European who is selected to marry Maggie. He is willing to swap values. The difference between his decision and theirs is that he knows what he is contemplating is wrong, but as long as all concerned are upfront, no harm done. Complicating matters is Charlotte Stant, a close friend of Maggie, who is in love with Amerigo and he with her, but both acknowledge that marriage is out of the question. Maggie convinces Charlotte to marry her father--again an exchange of value for value. The two marriages occur and things are more or less normal for a few years. Maggie has a baby, but neither the baby nor her husband are allowed to interfere with her relation with Adam. Maggie, eager to have more time for her father, encourages Amerigo and Charlotte to spend time together. Eventually, Maggie gets suspicious and guesses the truth. The novel ends with Charlotte and Adam leaving for America, leaving a suddenly contrite Maggie to relight the spark in a marriage that was never properly lit in the first place.

The dominant theme is less complex to relate than to analyze. All four spouses are willing to marry as long as each one receives value for value. For Adam, this value is renting/buying (it is difficult to approximate the correct verb) a titled husband that he believes will make Maggie happy. He is quite prepared to pay millions. For Amerigo, this value is getting enough money so that he can make his way in the world. He is prepared to be a probably non-functional trophy husband. For Maggie, this value is fulfilling her biological imperative, and she is prepared to ignore Amerigo or pay attention to him as the case may be. And for Charlotte, this value parallels Amerigo's and she is prepared to pay the same price as he does.

Unifying all these cross-cutting themes is the Golden Bowl of the title. Early in the novel and before any of the marriages, Amerigo and Charlotte plan to buy a suitable gift for his marriage to Maggie: a magnificent golden bowl, with a minute defect, a slight crack. They refuse to buy it for that reason. Later in the novel, the bowl reappears with Maggie's learning that it had been intended as her wedding gift. Maggie sees, perhaps subliminally, that the bowl is symbolic of her life with her father and her husband. As long as she lives with her father, life will be an uncracked bowl, perfect externally but inhuman internally. Maggie's realization that her life with Amerigo must contain that crack comes with breathtaking force. She, Amerigo, Adam, and Charlotte have chosen to live with a cracked bowl. For those readers with the patience and skill in deciphering an admittedly complex text, they can see that in this imperfect bowl Henry James has made a very profound statement about the human condition.
... Read more

Product Description
The stories in this collection were written mostly between 1888 and 1897, a time when Henry James’s writing was concerned with the art of fiction and the position of the artist in society. The motif and title story, ‘The Figure in the Carpet’, is an inspired joke, a masterpiece of double-entendre that demands the reader’s undivided love and attention and continues to baffle its critics. Also included are ‘The Author of Beltraffio’, an absorbing story of family infighting, authorship and tragedy, and ‘The Private Life’, a spirited tale that considers the contrast between the artist alone and at work. While many of these stories appear to be elaborate Jamesian games, all employ irony and humour to allegorize artistic creation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good selection; Kindle version mixes up pages
The Kindle version of this Penguin book mixes up pages near the beginning, so that we get two or three pages of James's introduction to "The Death of the Lion" interrupted by Frank Kermode's Note on the Texts, which is itself printed with its second half first and first half buried in James's introduction's second half.

It's easy to figure out what's happening and live with it, but oh when will Kindle publishers start taking even the most elementary care of their products? Penguin has a reputation to consider, after all.

The selection is good and Kermode's introduction is thorough and intelligent. The stories are all about writers and their problems with the public, with editors, and with their own works. It's ironic that such a collection should be partly ruined by sloppy commercial publishing. ... Read more

Product Description
Nine of James's most important tales, including (new to the second edition) "In the Cage," a tale that engages James's complicated attitudes toward gender, class, and the rise of information technology. "The Author on His Craft" again reprints James's critical essay "The Art of Fiction" and related passages from his notebooks, including a new passage on "In the Cage." "Criticism" has been entirely updated and includes ten new essays by critics who during the last twenty-five years have helped to establish the lines of debate about James's tales.

About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Excellent Collection
I am reviewing the first edition of this magnificent book.I had no idea there was a second edition, which adds one new tale to the contents and includes updated critical essays.I've just ordered it and can't wait to devour!

The contents for the first edition is:
THE TEXTS OF THE STORIES
"Daisy Miller: A Study" (1878)
"An International Episode" (1878)
"The Aspern Papers" (1888)
"The Pupil" (1891)
"Brooksmith" (1891)
"The Real Thing" (1892)
"The Middle Years" (1893)
"The Beast in the Jungle" (1903)
"The Jolly Corner" (1908)

THE AUTHOR ON HIS CRAFT
Editor's Commentary
Henry James, "The Art of Fiction"
From the Notebooks of Henry James:
[On the origin of "Brooksmith"]
[On the origin of "The Aspern Papers"]
[On the origin of "The Real Thing"]
[On the origin of "The Middle Years"]
[On the origin of "The Beast in the Jungle"]
[Regarding "The Jolly Corner" in retrospect}
Henry James, from His Prefaces:
[on each of the tales in this edition]
Henry James, from His Letters:
--To Eliza Lynn Linton (ca. August 1880)
--To Mrs. F. H. Hill (March 21, 1879)
BACKGROUND:
Katherine Anne Porter, "The Days Before"
Leon Edel, "Henry James: The American-European Legend"
CRITICISM:
David Daiches, "Sensibility and Technique (Preface to a Critique)
Jacques Barzun, "James the Melodramatist"
F. O. Mattiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, "{How His Ideas Came to Him]"
Christof Wegelin, "Revision and Style"
Philip Rahv, "Daisy Miller"
Carol Ohmann, "Daisy Miller: A Study of Changing Intentions"
Christof Wegelin, ["An International Episode"]
Wayne C. Booth, "'The Purloining of the Aspern Papers' or 'The Evocation of Venice'?"
Mildred Hartsock, "Unweeded Garden: A View of THE ASPERN PAPERS"
Mildred Hartsock, ["The Pupil"]
Earle Labor, "James's "The Real Thing": Three Levels of Meaning
Krishna Baldev Vaid, "The Beast in the Jungle"
Edwin H. Cady, ["The Beast in the Jungle"]
Krishna Baldev Vaid, "The Jolly Corner"

The book tucks in a lot of text, and it is all of extraordinary interest.Literary biography and criticism are passions of mine, and thus these Norton Critical Editions are goldmines that overflow with literary gems.The choice of tales is fine (I would have preferred something other than the dull "An International Episode," something wondrous like "The Figure in the Carpet").James had such a fine mind, and his imagination knew no equal.His strange works, such as THE SACRED FOUNT and "The Turn of the Screw"and "The Figure in the Carpet" are very weird indeed -- either they completely captivate you or drive you crazy.Of the tales printed here, "The Aspern Papers" is my favourite, a tale with which I am obsessed (I have it in many printed editions and in two spoken word audio editions).The story has inspired a variety of reactions, one of the strongest reactions may be found in Sheldon M. Novick's perverse yet fascinating two-volume biography of Henry James,We find, in THE MATURE MASTER, page 110: "The story was a cruel joke, and it concerned people who were still living; but the story was a great success.The atmosphere of Venice is beautifully evoked. much of the action occurs in an improbable garden, and the narrator's evil deception is at home in the atmosphere of mingled innocence and corruption."I like that phrase, "an improbably garden," and hope one day to use it in a supernatural Lovecraftian tale of my own inspir'd by "The Aspern Papers."And Novick reminds us that Henry James was a master in evoking a sense of place just as much as he was dipping into human psyche.

This is such a great book, and it serves as a wonderful edition to those who are coming to Henry James short stories for the first time.His complete tales have finally been published in five handsome hardcover editions from The Library of America.He was, in the short story and novella form, as much a Master as he was of the intricate novel.

... Read more

Product Description
Written when James was70, "A Small Boy and Others", long out of print, is an exquisitely artful dramatic monologue on a young boy's search for "the aesthetic clue." James finds his evidence in the refined reconstructions of his family life, his imagination, his travel, and his memories of the streets and neighborhoods of 19th-century New York. "A Small Boy and Others" is a very personal study of fate, memory, and the wonder of youthful conciousness and curiousity. It is also a love letter of sorts to New York City in the third quarter of the 19th century. With wit and curiosity evident on every page, "A Small Boy and Others" transformed the art of autobiography.

"Henry James looked back at his past with the same search for the truths of the emotions which Proust was to show in his novel "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu."" Leon Edel

5.5 x 8.5 in. ... Read more

Product Description
What Maisie Knew (1897) represents one of James's finest reflections on the rites of passage from wonder to knowledge, and the question of their finality.The child of violently divorced parents, Maisie Farange opens her eyes on a distinctly modern world.Mothers and fathers keep changing their partners and names, while she herself becomes the pretext for all sorts of adult sexual intrigue.

In this classic tale of the death of childhood, there is a savage comedy that owes much to Dickens. But for his portrayal of the child's capacity for intelligent `wonder', James summons all the subtlety he devotes elsewhere to his most celebrated adult protagonists. Neglected and exploited by everyone around her, Maisie inspires James to dwell with extraordinary acuteness on the things that may pass between adult and child. In addition to a new introduction, this edition of the novel offers particularly detailed notes, bibliography, and a list of variant readings. ... Read more

Product Description

"He was a supreme artist in the intimacies and connections that bind people together or tear them apart," says Leon Edel in his introduction to this collection of Henry James's best letters. Edel has chosen, from the four-volume epistolarium already published, those letters which especially illuminate James's writing, his life, his thoughts and fancies, his literary theories, and his most meaningful friendships. In addition, there are two dozen letters that have never before been printed.

In its unity, its elegance, and its reflection of almost a century of Anglo-American life and letters, this correspondence can well be said to belong to literature as well as to biography. Besides epistles to James's friends and family--including his celebrated brother, William--there are letters to notables such as Flaubert and Daudet in France; Stevenson, Gosse, Wells, and Conrad in England; and Americans from William Dean Howells to Edith Wharton. The latter correspondence, in particular, enlarges our understanding of James's complex involvements with Wharton and her circle; among the previously unpublished letters are several to Wharton's rakish lover, Morton Fullerton.

This masterly selection allows us to observe the precocious adolescent, the twenty-six-year-old setting out for Europe, the perceptive traveler in Switzerland and Italy, and the man-about-London consorting with Leslie Stephen and William Morris, meeting Darwin and Rossetti, hearing Ruskin lecture, visiting George Eliot. The letters describe periods of stress as well as happiness, failure as well as success, loneliness as well as sociability. They portray in considerable psychological depth James's handling of his problems (particularly with his family), and they allow us to see him adjust his mask for each correspondent.

Product Description
The Cambridge Companion to Henry James is intended to provide a critical introduction to James' work. Throughout the major critical shifts of the past fifty years, and despite suspicions of the traditional high literary culture that was James' milieu, as a writer he has retained a powerful hold on readers and critics alike. All essays are written at a level free from technical jargon, designed to promote accessibility to the study of James and his work. ... Read more

Product Description

This collection was designed for optimal navigation on Kindle and other electronic devices. It is indexed alphabetically, chronologically and by category, making it easier to access individual books. This collection offers lower price, the convenience of a one-time download, and it reduces the clutter in your digital library. All books included in this collection feature a hyperlinked table of contents and footnotes. The collection is complimented by an author biography.

Table of Contents

List of Works by Genre and Title
List of Works in Alphabetical Order
List of Works in Chronological Order
Henry James Biography

List of Works by Genre and Title

Novels :: Novellas and tales

Novels
The Ambassadors
The Awkward Age
The Bostonians
The Europeans
The Golden Bowl
The Portrait of a Lady
Roderick Hudson
The Turn of The Screw
Washington Square
What Maisie Knew
The Wings of the Dove

Novellas and tales
The Aspern Papers
The Beast in the Jungle
Daisy Miller
The Figure In The Carpet

Customer Reviews (6)

Unusually incomplete for Mobi
Mobi's other author collections are stunning, and their indexing is always great, but this collection is very short of complete, missing THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA and almost all James's works shorter than his larger novels.

The so-called COMPLETE HENRY JAMES also leaves out CASAMASSIMA, but it has more nouvelles and is generally a better buy, with an adequate set of tables of contents. The three offerings from Halcyon put together also give a larger selection, and not at too much worse a price.

I don't know what stands in the way of a real Henry James COMPLETE, but among incomplete selections, Mobi, rarely outclassed, loses this round, I think.

Comments from the Publisher
Comments from the Publisher:

The book was corrected on April 25th, 2009. The new version 11.2 completely resolves the missing preface problem.

MobileReference

The Turn of the Screw is missing the opening section.
As noted in the prior review, The Turn of the Screw is missing the entire opening expository section. This makes one wonder if the remaining texts should first be verified with editions known to be complete. Otherwise, navigation is adequate and it is a nice collection.

Works of Henry James(kindle edition)
Unfortunately there appears to be content missing in this collection.When I went to read "The Turn of the Screw" the first section was not to be found.The story in the kindle edition starts with the manuscript written by the governess.But the preceding section that relates the reason for the manuscript becoming public is missing!
Mobile Reference produces some fine collections, but they really dropped the ball here.

simply amazing
Works of Henry James. Including The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw, The Ambassadors, The Bostonians, The Europeans, The Wings of the Dove & more. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

The charm of Henry James is that the reader is asked to use his own imagination in interplay with the writing. It's a puzzle, and the more imagination one brings, the more fascinating the characters.
... Read more

Product Description
This important new book argues that Henry James' fiction reveals a sophisticated theory of moral understanding and moral motivation. The claim is that James is engaged in a distinctive kind of original thinking and reflecting on modern moral life in his novels and short stories. The book offers important new interpretations of many novels as well as several short stories. It is written by one of the pre-eminent interpreters of the modern European philosophical tradition and will interest philosophers as well as literary critics. Moreover, the style is completely non-technical, with no reliance on contemporary literary or philosophical theory, and will therefore be accessible to students and general readers. ... Read more

Product Description
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Short Stories of Henry Jame: Worth the Effort
The short stories of Henry James are a microcosm of his novels: bafflingly complex, syntactically convoluted, and thematically multi-layered.He wrote more than 100 between 1864 and 1910, of which perhaps a few dozen are much read today. Complicating any discussion of his short prose is to define "short." Many of his short stories are long enough to qualify as novellas but regardless of the length, any fiction of Henry James promises to take the reader into the world of the microverse, a highly stylized and internalized arena where action counts less than thought and "how" far more than "what." For those who come to his short fiction after having read, say THE GOLDEN BOWL or THE AMBASSADORS, such readers have learned patience, secure in the knowledge that the inner workings of the mind are surely more interesting than the slam-bang world of reality.

There are a few themes that James uses often both in his short and long fiction.He likes to place cultured and intelligent protagonists in an alien environment just to watch them squirm on a foreign alter, or what is more sinister, to maintain them in a familiar ground, only to change the laws of physics or rationality--and then watch them squirm. He employs the doppelganger, or double of the protagonist, one who might be his present or future version, or again more sinister, one who might be a spectral reincarnation. Many of James' heroes fear marriage and must battle an encrusted society that demands it.James was also fascinated with innocence, especially in children and child-like adults. In such stories, the world exists only to corrupt such innocence. Finally, James rarely used one theme in isolation. He much preferred to onion his stories with overlapping themes, all of which are centered on James' rich and allusive prose style, allowing him to meld the complexity of content with the complexity of style.I have chosen a few of his short prose fiction as examples of the quintessential Henry James.

In "The Aspern Papers," James writes of a narrator who must balance the need to obtain art (the papers of the deceased American poet Aspern) while maintaining his ethics while so doing.The narrator travels to Venice for these papers only to discover that their current owners are quite unwilling to give them up. He promises to marry one of them in return for their delivery to him, thinking all the while they are too naïve to see through his scheme. In the end, he tries to steal them, only to learn that they have burned them, one page at a time.James' narrator is one of a long series of such who speak of integrity more than show it.

In "The Jolly Corner," James uses the "double" of the protagonist to point out how one man's life could have been had things been different. Spencer Brydon, an American expatriate returns to America, only to meet his ghostly alter ego, one who Brydon might have become had he stayed at home. Perhaps James had in mind Lambert Strether of THE AMBASSADORS, who is also the model of what the alter ego might have been: a money-grubbing capitalist with no one to tell him "Live!"

James uses "The Pupil" to depict the loss of childhood innocence. The caddish and grifting transplanted American Moreen family hires fellow American Pemberton to tutor their son. They refuse to pay him agreed on wages, all the while exhorting him with the nobility of his task.They offer him custody of their son, which he understandably refuses, but the boy is crushed since he favors Pemberton over his parents.

Art versus life come into conflict in "The Real Thing."The narrator is hired by a couple, punningly named the Monarchs, to paint them as exemplars of the "real thing" of nobility.It is his realization that the reality of their claim does not allow him to create the illusion of a second-rate knock off. He is unwilling to further society's need to measure a life by glorifying its phony aspect.

In these stories and in Henry James' others, he presents the reader with a subjective examination of the inner workings of the mind. For those readers who wish to enter such a microverse, they will find that James' admittedly baffling style will be seen as more as a part of that journey than an impediment.


... Read more

Product Description
Set amid the splendor of London drawing rooms and gilded Venetian palazzos, The Wings of the Dove is the story of Milly Theale, a naïve, doomed American heiress, and a pair of lovers, Kate Croy and Merton Densher, who conspire to obtain her fortune. In this witty tragedy of treachery, self-deception, and betrayal, Henry James weaves together three ill-fated and wholly human destinies unexpectedly linked by desire, greed, and salvation. As Amy Bloom writes in her Introduction, “The Wings of the Dove is a novel of intimacy. . . . [James] gives us passion, he gives us love in its terrible and enchanting forms.” ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A Not-So-Great "Great Work" (That's Being Kind)
It's astonishing to me that this thinly plotted, atrociously incomprehensible tangle of verbiage ever gained a reputation for being 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. Still, I'm 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, for those interested in 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.

Amazing Prose -- Read Passages Aloud to Verify [26][69]
Many critical statements about this book are about its style. But think: would you wear clothes by the best designers of this era (1904)? Buy the furniture of this time? Choose the cuisine of this time? Maybe, you would enjoy seeing them, but living with them is not something a 21st century person seeks.

No English writer exceeds this writer's talents.So many passages are richly written. Vibrantly depicted and thoroughly described openings to many scenes demand slow reading - to totally appreciate the excellence of the artist. Amazingly, most improve when read aloud. Examples.

"He represented what her life had never given her; all the high dim things she lumped together as of the mind." "You're familiar with everything, but conscious really of nothing.""It was clear, on the other hand, that Mrs. Lowder was keeping her wealth as for purposes, imaginations, ambitions, that would figure as large, as honorably unselfish, on the day they should take effect." "That was the impression - that she was telling things, and quite conceivably for her own relief as well; almost as if the errors of vision, the mistake of proportion, the residuary innocence of spirit still to be remedied on the part of her auditor. . . " "She was to wonder in subsequent reflexion what in the world they had actually said, since they had made such a success of what they didn't say. . . "

This novela love triangle - or is it a square? Densher loves Kate, but her aunt prohibits his middle class heritage from polluting her niece's blue blood. An arranged marriage is made between Kate and Lord Mark.American beauty, and rich to boot, Milly adores Densher. The Lord, knowing his anticipated betrothed will always pine for Densher, grows fond of the rich American. But, her heart belongs to another. And, Milly's ill health calls upon the other three to often attend her needs.They fear the worst.

In this love square, all are in love, all are social friends, all are miserable.

Kate sees Milly's infatuation with Densher as an opportunity - win her, marry her, watch her die (she is infirmed with an unnamed illness that kills young people) and become wealthy enough that even the stodgy grandmother would have to approve. Kate is not as pretty inside as she is outside.Her character (if not this story) is the creative force which manufactured Sarah Michelle Gellar's Kathryn Merteuil character of cinema's "Cruel Intentions."

Eventually, the flower must wilt. Milly's wings must fly to a happier place. "Of having been loved. . . That is. . .her passion. She wanted nothing more. She has had all that she wanted." Milly sought little, was amused easily, and died having been well amused.

And, Kate and Densher live.But, neither is effervescent as their future choices".. .were, by strange effect, as close as a pair of monsters of whom he might have felt on either cheeks the hot breath and the huge eyes." Densher regrettably made a choice to play Kate's game, and he lost. But, in the end, he deals his own game to Kate, which he wins. An O'Henry-like twist at the end redeems something for Densher and those who sought something of Milly's life.

As stated at the outset, the writing is dated. It is not light reading.But, it is worthwhile reading. Prose never gets much better. Prose may not be any better.

Dazzling
I've read this novel half a dozen times over the years and my admiration for it grows more and more.James is as deeply experimental in his own highly iddiosyncratic manner as Joyce and Virginia Woolf were, taking us into the human psyche in new ways, echoing patterns of thought and subtleties of feeling as no one had ever done before.All of this genius is in service of a dark story of death and betrayal.When I first read the book, I had not suffered in love or suffered deeply in any way and while I enjoyed where it took me, I didn't resonate to it.As the years went by, however, it meant more and more to me.It's not to be read by the young or callow, by people expecting easy flash and false fire, by those who thought A Million Little Pieces was well written or even true.It's written at a pace that demands shifting one's perspective to a slower time, to a carriage ride, or better still, a ride in gondola.James loved his readers, loved the world, loved his craft, loved Venice, loved Milly Theale--the book bursts with it.Like The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl, The Wings of the Dove is demanding, but the rewards are rich and rare.

Oh Henry James, Why Did You Hate Your Readers So?
Some authors (let's say William Faulkner, for example) are able to challenge their readers without alienating them. While reading Faulkner, I know I am in the hands of a master who is not going to let me flounder.He's passionate about the story he wants to tell, and he wants me to get as much from it as he himself does.

Then there are the other authors (like....oh, I don't know....Henry James perhaps) who get so involved in the story they are telling that they forget they are trying to tell it to somebody.What us unlucky readers get, as a result, is a thick, ponderous, obtuse work of fiction that will likely mean much more to its author than to anybody else.

What is "The Wings of the Dove" about, you ask?I don't really know.It has something to do with two forbidden lovers plotting to abscond with the fortune of an ailing American heiress, and at a higher level it's about American innocence being corrupted by European cynicism. But it doesn't much matter what the novel is about, because all ideas and developments are buried underneath a mountain of suffocating prose that foils all attempts at comprehension.

I don't know how James got the reputation for being a poetic, beautiful writer.Rarely have I run into writing more clunky in nature, every sentence chopped into pieces with the shrapnel of commas and dependent clauses. This novel feels like a rough draft; it's as if James first got all of his ideas down on paper no matter how awkwardly, but then forgot to go back and clean it up. I don't really care for Hemingway much either, but I'm craving his pointed, crystalline prose just to wash the taste of James from my mouth.

better than I'd expected . . .
It's easy to get overwhelmed by the joy an author takes in their subject.Certainly Henry James had but one: The innocence and naiveity of young America getting seduced, transformed and all-together changed by its confrontation with an old world Europe that is more brutal and desperate than all the regularly criticized American vulgarities.Now James was a consummate stylist--a brilliant writer of carefully diagrammed and constructed sentences and an, at times, of needless and excessively subtle growing menace.This can make for an often turgid, frequently dull narrative--the work of a man far more interested in style than in the substance of anything actually going on in his shrouded characters' lives.

Fortunately The Wings of the Dove is a better example of James at work: a plot that is outlined from the very beginning and a consistant approach to his theme that hardly ever bogs down with over-explanation.It is a good book, an at times even brilliant book, with a story that is clearly inevitable but with enough emphasis on its character's individual humanity to allow for disclosure of independant diversions.

I had little interest in this book when I started, my experience with James ruined in the past by the pretention of college professors and a sodden girth of contrary critical study, each promoting a specific agenda more concerned with condemning one view than with promoting another.This book is no doubt open to just as furious a debate as, say, Portrait of a Lady or The Bostonians (although with such a tame story, as with all, that I have considerable doubt that enough of today's readers can be inspired to even care--), but it remains more focused on telling its story than in confusing the reader by expressing the confused frame of its characters' perceptions.

Better than average stuff from that still school of dialectitions who seem somehow so nervous and rigid when relating all those dark urges they know are buried underneath. ... Read more

Product Description
Henry James (1843 - 1916) was one of the leaders in the school of realism in fiction.He is known for his series of novels in which he portrayed the encounter of Americans with Europe. James is considered to be the master of the novel and novella.James wrote about personal relationships and the power within these relationships.James explored consciousness and perception from the point of view of a character within a tale.Glasses is the story of a woman who has willingly sacrificed for her love ones.Sadly, she receives nothing in return.This is a beautifully told story about her disappointments and frustrations. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
XXIII. IT was certainly singular, under the circumstances, that on sitting down in his studio, after Julia had left town, Nick Dormer'should not, as regards the effort to reproduce some beautiful form, have felt more chilled by the absence of a friend who was such an embodiment of beauty. She was away, and he longed for her, and yet without her the place was more filled with what he wanted to find in it. He turned into it with confused feelings, the most definite of which w~s a sense of release and recreation. It looked blighted and lonely and dusty, and his old studies, as he rummaged them out, struck him as even clumsier than the last time he had ventured to drop his eyes upon them. But amid this neglected litter, in the colorless and obstructed light of a high north windov which needed washing, he tasted more sharply the possibility of positive happiness: it appeared to him that, as he had said to Julia, he was more in possession of his soul. It was frivolity

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Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.

Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the difficult to read text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org ... Read more