Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Literary; Social Science / Gerontology; ... Read more

Product Description
A mesmerizing novel of an American society girl that chronicles her life from adolescence to maturity. James has portrayed the corruption and debauchery of that society. The ambiguities of characters are presented in a persuasive manner. A gripping novel with various surprising twists.
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Customer Reviews (8)

A Psychological Policier
If you are not prepared to read several scenes in this novel slowly and often, there is a very good chance that, like many academic reviewers, you will leave it thinking less well of the characters in it than you do of yourself for having, with only moderate encouragement from James, "seen through them." Not many of them are easy to like. Mrs. Brook in particular is, as James clearly implies in his preface to the New York edition, essentially a character in a French novel--charming, beautiful, terminally manipulative. But the pleasure of this book is precisely that it obliges you, by the precise obliquity of its writing, to recurively correct your notions as you move through a series of set scenes, transferring your allegiances as characters initially attractive come to seem less so, and as characters less attractive come, by their honesty or their helplessness, to the moral fore. The long scene at Tishy Grendon's, in which everything comes to a kind of moral head, craves such careful reading that even inveterately fascinated and loyalist readers of James will need to piece their way through it very slowly. Critics and readers who, understandably, wonder why all this fuss is made about people themselves ultimately trivial, need to be reminded that James spent his life as a writer teaching us, by the difficulty of his writing, to read (in just the same way that Bach teaches us to listen). It is "the fascination of what's difficult" that keeps us turning pages, though it must be said that what's difficult here is considerably less so than, say, in The Golden Bowl or The Wings Of The Dove. Ultimately, what is upheld in these novels is the willingness, in a world riddled with well bred rottenness, evil in spotless linen, to live without self pity or bitterness, and for this alone James should be required reading for Americans of the 21st Century.

An Uncharacteristic Gem by a Literary Giant
This novel tells a familiar tale: old-fashioned man enters a tangled web of wealthy British fashionable types, makes a proposal, and the web falls apart.Mr. Longdon, a wealthy old man from Suffolk, returns to London to find the children and grandchildren of his ancient love.Out of respect for this unspoiled affection, he takes an interest in the grand-daughter of his love and tries to pull her out of the circle of influence that has, effectively, soiled her.James manages some interesting and convincing characters, and these pawns interact in some magnificent scenes.It almost reminds me of Restoration Comedy, with its complicated dialogue and dramatic jumps in setting that resemble staged scenes.The major thread of the novel is the relationship between Vanderbank, a complicated but good-natured young man who has managed to penetrate that affluent circle, and Nanda Brookenham, the granddaughter of Longdon's lost love.Vanderbank remains deliciously puzzling to the end of the novel, and Nanda manages a kind of heroism.The conclusion is somewhat surprising; James, by this point in his career, seems to have moved beyond the endorsement of conservative values evident in a work like The Bostonians.Despite the surprise, though, it was a great deal of fun getting to that conclusion.This novel is as close to a page-turner as I have read from James thus far, and bristles with subtle interrogation of a rotting social structure.I have no trouble saying, like F.R. Leavis, that this novel ranks among James's best.

"Maisie" was better
Critics will often pair this novel with his earlier "What Maisie Knew."

Both novels deal with the child's / adolescent's emerging conscience, while faced with adult corruption.

In "Maisie" and "Awkward," we see James following up on his fascinationwith Hawthornian themes.

James's facility with dialogue, in which abrupt blushes are loaded with meaning, is apparent here.The drawing-room conversations reminded me of a party in a swimming pool; each character is constantly, in a conversational sense, "taking a plunge and coming up somewhere else."

I found this novel somewhat thin - read closely James's "Preface to the New York Edition"; can you hear James in self-defense mode?

Overall, not bad, but "Maisie's" somber and gloomy tone was better suited to the subject matter and themes than the "light and ironic" touch of "Awkward."

A Frustrating Book, Unlikeable Characters
I thought the value of this book lied not in its story (it was forgettable), but as a sort of cultural museum, allowing one to look intowhat English "high society" was like at the end of the 19thcentury.

What it was, I found, was horribly superficial and empty.Thesepeople had little to do with their time except gather at eachother'sparlours and chat idlely and endlessly.But with nothing to talk about andall day to talk about it, it was considered better to sound"clever" than to have something meaningful to say; style wasvalued in the absense of substance.No one said what they felt, no onefelt strongly about what they said, and the whole frustrating lot of themcame across as a bunch of phonies.They were all but toppling over withthe weight of their own pretensions.

The reason I found this frustrating,though, is that in his other works I have read (admittedly not that many),the reward for struggling through James' prose is his deeply penetratingunderstanding of human nature; clearly, James "gets" people, andit shows in his sharp observation and subtle wit.So that made me struggleall the more to peel back the layers of clever chatter to "get"what James was driving at, but after I turned the final unfathomable page,all I could say was "huh?"

Great Plot, Could Have Used a Different Author
When Nanda Brookenham "comes out" in her mother's salon, one question is immediately which of its male members she will marry--and soon.The urgency is partly financial:Nanda's parents seem to live almostbeyond their means and she has no dowry.It is also moral:Given thesalon's racy talk and unconcealed sexual intrigues, how can Nanda longcontinue to present an image of the "pure young girl" it wasassumed most men would want to marry?And finally, it may be familial: Does Mrs. Brookenham really want a younger female competitor sitting withher daily?

Nanda's choices seem limited to three: The handsome, clever,conceited Vanderbank, who she prefers, but who is not that well off and whomay be attached to her mother. The ugly, awkward, but rich and kindMitchy, who prefers her.And possibly, the elderly, conventional, but richand kind Mr. Longdon, who was in love with her dead grandmother and who mayturn out to be either a benefactor or a suitor.

Nanda's mother ishighly manipulative, not only in trying to arrange her daughter's marriagebut in meddling with all her friends' affairs.The grandmother to whom Mr.Longdon always compares Nanda was the eptiome of old-fashioned purity andreticence.The other central question of the novel is:Which role modelwill Nanda choose?

In the hands of a less verbose writer, The Awkward Agecould have been action-packed, clever, and even moving in depicting thelimitations of its characters' choices.As it is, James's hesitations,qualifications, and reluctance to fully disclose his characters'motivations partly spoil it.We know (as much as James will ever tell)which suitor Nanda chose.But we are unable to gauge whether she has beenmanipulative, and acted from cynical financial and social calculation, orwhether she has been "pure," and acted from real emotionalimpulse.That is, we never quite know which role model she chose (though Ihave my guess).

The novel is written mostly in dialog and reads in placeslike a play.Personally, I'd like to see it turned it into a play or filmscript.Simply cutting out a lot of verbosity could give it a clearmeaning and a real ending. I even think I know what she'd do with her lifeafter the novel ended. ... Read more

Product Description
In New York Revisited, first published in Harper's Monthly Magazine in 1906, Henry James describes turn-of-the-century New York in vivid detail.Although written in 1904-1905, when James returned to the U.S. after living abroad for more than 20 years, the essay is as pertinent today as it was 100 years ago.The text appears as it was originally published and is enhanced with period illustrations and photographs.Beautifully bound and with a spectacular view of the Flatiron building on the cover, this book is a literary treasure. ... Read more

Product Description
Do the surfaces matter? In this provocative book, A Superficial Reading of Henry James: Preoccupations with the Material World, Thomas J. Otten demonstrates that surfaces matter profoundly. Taking seriously the accessories of Henry James’s fiction—the china and bric-a-brac, the antique cabinets and tapestries, the ribbons and hats—this book argues that James’s famous ambiguity is a material state, an indeterminate zone where the difference between essence and ornament disappears. Ranging between fictions as well-known as The Portrait of a Lady (whose heroine is celebrated for her psychological complexity) and ones as under-studied as "Rose-Agathe" (whose heroine is a hairdresser’s manikin), Otten suggests that the distinction between what counts as thematic depth and what counts as physical surface is, for James, impossible to maintain. Achieving a superficial reading of Henry James means demonstrating the persistence of the material within the novelist’s most conceptual formations of meaning—an argument with important consequences for literary theory, as Otten shows in his concluding chapters.

Eloquently written and guided by a perverse love for the superfluous detail, this book makes an important contribution to a fast-growing area of the humanities, one newly committed to the serious study of material culture, the concrete experiences of everyday life, and the history of the physical senses. ... 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

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

Customer Reviews (3)

Clarification and Caveat Emptor
There is nothing wrong with the fiction contained in this volume of stories and novels by Henry James.However, its publishing history makes it a dubious online purchase.

I was working in a bookstore when this title was first released and an early printing of this title did in fact, accidentally, leave off the last chapter of "Jolly Corner".That mistake has since been rectified by the NYRB. Most likely, if you order this book from Amazon, you'll get "The Jolly Corner" in its entirety. But you can't be sure.Amazon surely will replace your defective copy --hopefully, not with a second defective copy-- because it's not the buyer's fault a book is printed wrong.Still, why risk it?

It's a decent collection, and it appears the NYRB has started to collect other writers' New York stories, which is nice.

Great Selection
Great selection of James stories (though I would call "Washington Square" a novel). It's nice to see unusual selections.

And no... they did not leave out the third chapter of "A Jolly Corner" as a misinformed "simple man" stated. It's all there. Verify it for yourself... The book is widely available in stores.

the partial image of a ghost of a story
I am a simple man. And when I read a story, I would like to have the entire story before me, and not be forced to go to the internet to find the rest of it!!!!!!!
This volume, incredibly, omits the third and final chapter of "A Jolly Corner"! It was an intersting experience, accidentally, because reading it without the last chapter made one confront the basic construct of the tale. It seemed incomplete after chapter two, but complete after chapter three. What was the missing element? The female character of absorption and empathy. So, I am glad that the compilation is a complete disaster, as it forced me to confront what this particular short story is really about: female human-ness vsmale ego driven self-delusion.

"Washington Square" is the only truly great work in the collection. I loved it.
I rate it a one because surely a person can read these stories on the internet in their complete form. ... Read more

Product Description

This is an electronic edition of the complete book complemented by author biography. This book features the table of contents linked to every chapter. The book was designed for optimal navigation on the Kindle, PDA, Smartphone, and other electronic readers. It is formatted to display on all electronic devices including the Kindle, Smartphones and other Mobile Devices with a small display.

Customer Reviews (9)

I'm afraid I just don't understand this novel's reputation!
THE TURN OF THE SCREW is the ambiguous story of a governess teaching two young orphaned children whose uncle guardian has assumed the financial responsibility for their upbringing but wishes to have absolutely no physical or emotional contact with them. Very shortly after she assumes her duties, ghostly apparitions begin to frequent the children's home and the surrounding grounds. Initially, the governess is worried that her sanity may be in question but, when she describes the appearances of the phantoms to the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, they are identified as Miss Jessel, the former governess and corrupt valet, Peter Quint, who left the home under very questionable circumstances. The governess, now convinced that the phantoms are all too real, is terrified that they are attempting to abduct and corrupt the souls of her two precious charges, little Flora and Miles.

Written in 1898, THE TURN OF THE SCREW has a reputation as the quintessential Victorian horror story and is revered in English literature as one of the finest examples of the genre. With advance billing like that, I wanted to like it, I really did. In a desire to be fair and balanced to a novella that has such a lofty reputation, I've taken the liberty of quoting Mary Whipple's eloquent five-star Amazon review (because I've come to trust Mary's opinions and, in fact, this is one of the reviews that prompted me to read it in the first place). Mary characterized the story as " ... still haunting after all these years."

"One of the most seductive of all ghost stories, TURN OF THE SCREW is a sophisticated and subtle literary exercise in which the author creates a dense, suggestive, and highly ambiguous story, its suspense and horror generated primarily by what the author does NOT say and does not describe. Compelled to fill in the blanks from his/her own store of personal fears, the reader ultimately conjures up a more horrifying set of images and circumstances than anything an author could impose from without.

... Though the governess is certainly neurotic and repressed, this novel was published ten years before Freud, suggesting that the story should be taken at face value, as a suspenseful but enigmatic Victorian version of a Faustian struggle for the souls of these children, yet numerous other interpretations find their ardent supporters as well."

While many ideas have been put forward, no unequivocal solutions to the mystery of the story exist because, frankly, James himself provided no explanations which might shed any light on this meta-mystery.

For many readers, this type of ambiguity is quite acceptable. Indeed, it is often the hallmark of a horror story that provides the spine-tingling frisson reaction that lovers of the genre look for. But, frankly, I just didn't care for it. Too me it smacked of an author who had a few rather creepy ideas abrogating his responsibility for the resolution of the plot and leaving it entirely up to the readers.

Even allowing for the literary habits of Victorian writers, the writing style itself, for my tastes, was lofty, muddled, pretentious and extraordinarily difficult to interpret. I found myself reading many sentences over and over again merely to haul a basic meaning out of the words. The reactions and the resulting decisions and actions of the governess and the housekeeper seemed odd, at best, and contrived and silly at the other extreme.

Sure, with the benefit of hindsight, I've read the analysis and the comments and I can see how they apply but, in the reading itself, I just didn't get it at all. And I don't think of myself as an inattentive reader or someone with constrained ideas by any means. So, despite the best of intentions, this is a review that definitely goes against the grain and pans what is generally considered a classic!

Not recommended.

Paul Weiss

Henry James Continues to Enthrall
The Turn of The Screw by Henry James. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

Henry James's tale is the last of the gothic Victorian novellas, with its richly developed sense of propriety - a semblance of manners and understatement concealing primitive subliminal impulse. Its dense, symbolic language penetrates deeply into the psyche. There is evil here. But its emanation is ambiguous and amorphous. The characters exist in a pervasive atmosphere of dread. The exact source of that dread has intrigued readers since it was written.

Kindle edition
The Turn of The Screw by Henry James. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

I was astonished by the great quality of "The Turn of the Screw." It is fascinating and remarkably entertaining. I highly recommend the Kindle edition by MobileReference. An excellent choice!

Comments from the Publisher
Comments from the Publisher:

We apologize for the inconvenience. The book was corrected on April 25th, 2009. The new version has the prologue.

MobileReference

A Ghost Story
"The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts." ~Italo Calvino

I have over 300 books that are considered "classics" on my to-read list. I am familiar with the plots of some of the most famous classics that I haven't read; however, in most of them I couldn't even tell you the plot or theme of the book. I was surprised to find out that The Turn of the Screw is actually a ghost story. Who knew?

I wanted a short quick classic book to read before my next book club book and so I grabbed one of the shortest on my list coming in at just over 100 pages. It was anything but a quick read for me. The biggest problem I have is that I typically read books late at night and usually I can read for an hour or two. For a week straight I found myself reading five pages and falling asleep. It was a struggle. The writing is very good but he is very descriptive almost to a fault in my opinion.

The book is about a young governess who is hired by a man who really has no desire to raise his niece and nephew after their parents have died. She is really enamored with the little boy and girl and thinks that they are near perfect. However, you can tell right away that something is off with these kids in a Children of the Corn sort of way. The governess starts seeing the ghosts of two people that worked there in the past that had been tragically killed. She believes that the children sees them as well and communicates with them ... but do they?

James leaves the ending very ambiguous and it can be interepreted many ways. Usually I don't like an openended ending; however, in this case I think it worked well. The book picks up in the final 30 pages; however, I can't recommend it because the first 60-70 pages were a bear. ... Read more

Product Description
As if Henry James himself were guiding us, we visit old Calvinist New York in the mid-nineteenth century, and share the coming-of-age of a young man whose boldness of spirit and profound capacity for affection attract both men and women to him. We journey with James through Italy and France, witness his first love affair in Paris, and settle with him in London at the height of Empire in the Victorian Age. We scale the heights of London society with him, and as the world opens to James we share with him the experience of writing a series of celebrated and successful novels, culminating with Washington Square (on which the play The Heiress is based) and his masterpiece The Portrait of a Lady. The Washington Post Book World notes: “It is no small ambition to write a biography of James that is commensurate with that master, and Sheldon Novick has done it.”

“Splendidly written . . . Novick has aimed to bring James back to life and he has succeeded brilliantly.”
–The Washington Post Book World

“Like a movie of James’s life, as it unfold moment to moment.”
–The New York Times

“Masterful in bringing James and his world to life.”
–San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

“Beautifully written, with a grace that enables [Sheldon Novick] to weave his subject’s words in and out of his own with a properly Jamesian suavity . . . Novick’s account gives one a profound respect for James’s persistence and power of will.”
–The New RepublicAmazon.com Review
In this shrewd, scrupulous biography covering the life of Henry James from hisbirth until the threshold of his greatest work, Sheldon Novick steers awayfrom the notion that James was a man of sublimated desires, the very figureof the repressed artist who observed life rather than living it. Novick, infact, argues that the object of James' earliest expression of love was noneother than the jurist Oliver WendellHolmes. Whether one chooses to believe that thesis or not, this is arefreshingly frank discussion of James' early life that sheds new light onhis astonishing capacity for literary creation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Portrait of a Nobody
I must confess straight away that I have never held Henry James in much esteem since I was forced to study his works by a Leavisite professor of English literature at university in Scotland almost 40 years ago. Unfortunately, at that time Professor Leavis, with his take-it-or-leave-it list of great writers (the later Dickens, D. H. Lawrence, Conrad, George Eliot, Jane Austen etc.)had a band of followers who spread his mechanical approach to literary criticism among a certain generation. Thankfully Leavis was dumped a long time ago and students of literature can go back to enjoying as well as studying writers.

Now I've got that off my chest, let's go back to this biography which is only the first a two-volume opus and takes up over 500 pages. Readers of my age will recall that an American worshipper of James called Leon Edel wrote a five-volume biography (yes, five volumes)along with collections of his letters and edited his novels and short stories.

So, why do we need another doorstopper and is there anything new in it? Well, according to the author - who has the kind of name Vladimir Nabokov could have invented for an American academic, Sheldon M. Novick -James was a homosexual! Even if this was important (and surely it should be for those Americans who regard James as their own Jane Austen), Novick does not get much mileage out of it. He claims that James had two homosexual affairs, one in the US and the other in Paris, but provides little proof and makes little of it. None other than Edel himself reviewed this book in 1996 and convincingly ridiculed Novick's claims.

The book itself is an (over)long, (over) leisurely (over) indulgent account of James's first 35 years which consists mainly of itineraries of the same routes - New England, Old England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany - and meetings with dinner parties with expatriate Americans. In fact, James comes over as a rather dull person, content to sponge off his father's diminishing wealth as he treads and retreads the same old paths, sometimes in pursuit of medical treatment (back bad) or sometimes meet up with friends. The reader gets no sense of James's personality (if he had any) and reading this book is like watching a dull film in a darkened cinema where you can doze off for a few minutes or hours, wake up and find that nothing has happened.

By the end of the first volume James has become a literary success story and has completed what is regarded as his masterpiece "Portrait of a Lady" but we have no idea how this has happened. The author does nothing to convey James's personality, nor his greatness as a writer. I wonder what American readers thought of it. I won't be reading the second volume.

An enjoyable biography, but lacking in depth
I read this bio of my favorite author, Henry James, with much interest, but I have to admit that it just doesn't grab me. I think the problem is that Novick, who wanted to separate himself from Edel, spent too much time on tiny details of Henry's life, taken from letters and other documents that Edel did not know. Because of this, the book reads like a listof details and minor events, rather giving the reader any feel of what Henry's inner life was like. He doesn't give much coverage to the actual writings, but rather what Henry did, when he did it, where he did it, and who he did it with. Since this first volume was published, Fred Kaplan's bio of James was released, which, I feel, was much more balanced and less pointillist. Edel's is still the more interesting - while the writing style takes getting used to, if you're an assiduous reader of Henry James it won't be any problem. But if you're a real fan of Henry James, and if you're interested in his life, you'll probably want to read all three of them. Just don't choose this one first.

Certainly worth the read
This biography addresses, for the first time, what has been obvious to readers of James and biographies of James who have not been afflicted with homophobia.Because he was not flamboyant as, say, Oscar Wilde, and because he never received what homophobics see as his "condign" punishment, scholars, I think, were reluctant to have a key element of the "canon," certainly not The Master, stigmatized with this accusation. Instead, it was acceptable to allow the stigma of repressed feelings and keep James properly closeted.Lest one think that this makes Novick's book bawdy and lurid, one should know that it merely restores to James his likely, vibrant and active life.In addition, one should know that this volume, of the two, is probably the more helpful for those who need or want foundational information about not just James' upbringing but also on the sources of much that occurs in his works including thematic tendencies.I found the book most enjoyable.It is thoroughly documented with only the periodic typographical anomalies (for example Zora Thurston).Having graded "The Pupil" at a recent AP reading, I was quite interested in Novick's comments on James' very strange educational history and its influence on that particular story.

The Most Readable James Biography
This first volume on James's life in relation to the writings brings us upto 1881 and The Portrait of a Lady.Novick can be more daring than LeonEdel was, especially about James's love life, as there are now more lettersavailable.It's also nice not to have Edel's over-the-top psychologicalreadings of the works and his Literary-Guild style of narration.Readersmay well have overlooked this important book, as it got little press whenit came out--the NY Times Book Review gave it two paragraphs in their"Books in Brief" department!But when vol. ii comes out, we willhave the most balanced and readable biography of James to date. ... 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)

A quick, interesting read
Daisy Miller is everything a woman of that era should not be: flighty, flirtatious and strong-willed. I enjoyed this novella because you so infrequently see a lead female character of that era portrayed in quite such an unflattering light. While the plot is simple there are a few twists and turns. This is an interesting, fun read. ... Read more

Product Description
A Little Tour of France is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Henry James is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Henry James then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

Product Description
Six classic stories-one volume

This indispensible anthology collects the short novels of Henry James, offering readers the full range of his skill and vision-the singular art and imagination of an author who profoundly influenced American literatureAmazon.com Review
The story starts conventionally enough with friends sharingghost stories 'round the fire on Christmas Eve. One of the gueststells about a governess at a country house plagued by supernaturalvisitors. But in the hands of Henry James, the master of nuance, thislittle tale of terror is an exquisite gem of sexual and psychologicalambiguity. Only the young governess can see the ghosts; only shesuspects that the previous governess and her lover are controlling thetwo orphaned children (a girl and a boy) for some evil purpose. Thehousehold staff don't know what she's talking about, the children areevasive when questioned, and the master of the house (the children'suncle) is absent. Why does the young girl claim not to see a perfectlyvisible woman standing on the far side of the lake? Are the childrenbeing deceptive, or is the governess being paranoid? By leaving thequestions unanswered, The Turn of Screw generatesspine-tingling anxiety in its mesmerized readers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (113)

Kindle Signet Turn of the Screw Plus is inferior to Bantam, "Complete"
The Kindle Signet THE TURN OF THE SCREW AND OTHER SHORT NOVELS contains:

An International Episode

Daisy Miller

The Aspern Papers

The Altar of the Dead

The Turn of the Screw

The Beast in the Jungle

Its introduction by Fred Kaplan is a little remote, and contains spoilers. The Bantam Classics TURN OF THE SCREW with other stories has what I think is a better selection, including WASHINGTON SQUARE.

Meanwhile the near-free COMPLETE HENRY JAMES, a purely ebook collection, has all these selections and many major novels as well. Go with Bantam if you want a good selection of top nouvelles and short novels. Go with COMPLETE if you want a lot of Henry James and can make your own choices about what's good.

Changed My Opinion Of James; Also, A Note On Spoilers
I don't want to use this space to objectively discuss the literary merit of THE TURN OF THE SCREW, or talk about the interpretational history of same, or to address any number of similar matters that others are much better qualified to than I am. I simply want to take a moment to note that this is the work that (for the space of a novella anyway) made me actually like Henry James.

Before I read this book, I hated, hated, HATED Henry James. Everything I read of his seemed to concern despicable characters mulling over petty social protocols, laid down in labyrinthine prose that would try the patience of a saint. I had always meant to attempt more of his work, largely in light of the fact that there were so many people whose opinions I respected who loved the stuff, but I couldn't quite get up the will until the other day where I picked up an old copy of TURN OF THE SCREW that I had sitting by my computer desk and actually made a running start of it.

Suprise! I actually found to be an entertaining (albiet difficult) read. I had been previously unaware that James was capable of creating a plot where you actually, you know, want to find how out things turn out, but here it was. Additionally, those long, complex sentences actually seem to be here for a reason this time - in a tale like TURN OF THE SCREW where the keynote is ambiguity, it actually makes stylistic sense to make the reader wind his way through the inchoate thoughts of a frightened young woman. Finally, I'm a sucker for an unreliable narrator like we find here (although she is not, in my opinion, either insane or hallucinatory). In short, I still don't think James is ever gonna be my go-to guy if I want to luxuriate in beautiful prose, but I do find it reassuring that he found a story where he could put his idiosyncratic style to good use.

POSTSCRIPT: A (hopefully) brief kvetch - why is it that, when dealing with classic fiction, so many people seem to think it's okay to include spoilers? I bring this up in this particular review as I don't believe I've ever seen so many as I have with writing (here and elsewhere) on TURN OF THE SCREW. To clarify: letting anyone know the ending of a story without forewarning them is terribly presumptuos and inconsiderate, regardless of said story's perceived literary merit, standing, or ubiquity. If you indulge in this odious practice, please refrain from doing so in the future.

Henry James at his best!
Love love love love this book. Not for the faint of heart - must love literature and be a dedicated reader to truly appreciate this book!

James Meets Edgar Allan Poe
So unlike the usual "young love" novel of this author, the drama of this novel centers upon mind games involvingapparitions - with the reader never knowing in full detail if the governess to whom the ghosts communicate exist or are merely figments of her deteriorating mind.

Basically a text of solitude's ability to fertilize fantasy, the reader experiences the growing paranoia of the governess as she attempts to understand who the haunting figures are, and for what reasons they keep coming to her.Drip by drip, step by step, the novel unfolds slowly to describe how she further becomes belabored by the experiences of intrusion created by fanciful appearances by allegedly former employees of the lord's home - who each left for reasons of totally unknown disrepute.

In the middle of this sequence are two adorable orphaned children whose care is now to be handled at their rich uncle's castle, all of whichis handled the old fashioned British way: send them off to someplace where the master does not have to see them, but deliver and afford them the luxuries which only the privileged few could enjoy (e.g. maids, private tutors and more).

These elementary school children are not allowed to attend the normal school - and the governess has the duty to educate these children who are exiled from the proper school.She wonders why they are outcasts to the school, and deduces that their relationship with theprevious governess and other aid - each who was the source of scandal and bad gossip - propagated the children's demise.But, she learns that more than her initial inclination may be the cause for the principal's order which prohibits their attendance at school.

Ultimately, the book ends with the twist and turn that is both despicable and expected.The mind's collapse under the extraordinary conditions at the manor have fully enveloped the psyche of the main character and the victim of her mental breakdown is the most ill suited.

Without love between young people and their everlasting joy, this book reads more like Poe than James.I was truly surprised by the topic and writing of this novel.

An Ambiguous Classic
If you are a fan of the Haunted House story then Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" is a mandatory addition to any reading list along with "The Haunting of Hill House", "Hell House" and "The Shining" (although "The Turn of the Screw" is considered the finest ghost story ever written - if that floats you boat).

The story, about a young governess who is hired to raise two children in isolation at an English estate, contains some gothic elements with ghostly apparitions but is overall very understated in its horrific elements by modern standards.Written in the 1800's there are no real overtly frightening moments and the "haunted" theme is used as a vehicle to convey other real world horrors in a very ambiguous way.

The books strength, and weakness for the modern horror reader, is its structure and ambiguity.James writes a story that creates uncertainty regarding the governess's sanity (the story is the governess's interpretation of events as conveyed through her written recap) and presents many situations that remain unexplained at the story's conclusion.It is the constant questioning of events and truthfulness in the descriptions that makes the story interesting and utterly frustrating at the same time.The reader is never sure if the ghosts are real or just "fantasies" created in the mind of a manipulative governess.Furthermore, the reader is never really sure what exactly happened in the past at the house and to the children.There are hints of sexual impropriety which is where the real horror comes from, but again the reader needs to draw their own conclusions and nothing is ever revealed as absolute.I am sure (if I interpreted some of the book correctly) the subject matter was too taboo to talk about clearly during the time "The Turn of the Screw" was published.

I am glad I read "The Turn of the Screw" for its literary merits and place in haunted house fiction history.The ambiguity was somewhat refreshing in that the reader can interpret the information many ways. However, I also found it difficult to immerse myself in the Victorian period and follow the narrative in a way that would allow me to absorb the richness of James masterpiece. ... Read more

Product Description
Henry James' classic work ... Read more

Product Description
This collection of Henry James's shorter works brings together some of his most famous works including "The Turn of the Screw", "Daisy Miller", and "The Aspern Papers". In addition to these works you will find the following tales: "Four Meetings", "In the Cage", "Owen Wingrave", "Pandora", "Sir Edmund Orme", "The Altar of the Dead", "The Beast in the Jungle", "The Death of the Lion", "The Friends of the Friends", "The Jolly Corner", "The Middle Years", "The Patagonia", and "The Private Life". "The Best Short Stories and Novellas of Henry James" is over 400 pages of the author's best shorter fiction. ... Read more

Product Description
The first five novels of Henry James, presented complete in this volume, feature sparkling dialogue, masterfully timed suspense, and the romance of youthful artistic aspirations. The contrast between Europe and America, which gives a special dimension to all of James's cultural observations, is brilliantly deployed in these early works. "Watch and Ward," written when James was 28, is a Bostonian version of the Pygmalion story. In "Roderick Hudson," a headstrong and gifted young American sculptor loses his way among the temptations of Italy. "The American" was written in Paris and dramatizes a confrontation between the expatriate culture of American tourists and the protected world behind the barriers of old families and traditions. "The Europeans," by contrast, places two visiting European cousins in a pristine and conservative New England village. The little-known and charming "Confidence" is a light drawing-room comedy about the romantic entanglements of America!ns traveling through Europe. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Henry James
When I received this item, we discovered that the dust jacket and book did not match.Fortunately, we were happy with the "surprise" book, so decided to keep it!

Great Story Teller
I first read these novels more than twenty years ago and I look forward to reading them again. James' early novels and stories are very entertaining and easy to read.He was great story teller and during this period his writing was not so dense as it would later become.

Some great early novels by Henry James
This book has five complete novels for one comparatively low price!"Watch and Ward," is a novel that James himself preferred to ignore as a youthful indiscretion, but I found it a vastly entertaining and suspenseful love story.Roderick Hudson is a compelling cautionary tale.The American is a gripping story that cries out for a movie version (in my fantasy Peter Weir would direct, and it might star Tom Cruise and Winona Ryder, although I'm sure many others would do just as well).This novel has love, a duel, a frightful skeleton in the closet, blackmail, Carmelite nuns, etc.The ending should be adjusted along the lines of the play version that James later wrote.The Europeans did not grab me, but Confidence is a delightful novel with something James later tended to avoid--a happy ending.This collection provides a lot of great novelistic entertainment for the buck.The way the Library of America does it is that for one they are non-profit, and second they use top quality thin acid-free paper, which allows them to fit five books into the space of something slightly larger than one thick paperback.The book even has a silky little bookmark to hold your place.Classy! ... Read more

Product Description
60 books by Henry James are included in this giant anthology. An active table of contents is included to make it easy to navigate to the work you are looking for.

Works include:
The Altar of the Dead
The Ambassadors
The American
The American Scene
The Aspern Papers
The Author of Beltraffio
The Awkward Age
The Beast in the Jungle
The Beldonald Holbein
The Bostonians: Volume I
The Bostonians: Volume II
A Bundle of Letters
The Chaperon
Confidence
The Coxon Fund
Daisy Miller: A Study in Two Parts
The Death of the Lion
The Diary of a Man of Fifty
Embarrassments
Eugene Pickering
The Europeans
The Figure in the Carpet
The Finer Grain
Four Meetings
Georgina's Reasons
Glasses
The Golden Bowl
Greville Fane
Hawthorne
An International Episode
Italian Hours
The Jolly Corner
The Lesson of the Master
A Little Tour in France
A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar
Louisa Pallant
Madame de Mauves
The Madonna of the Future
The Marriages
Nona Vincent
The Outcry
Pandora
A Passionate Pilgrim
The Patagonia
The Path of Duty
The Pension Beaurepas
Picture and Text
The Point of View
The Portrait of a Lady
The Pupil
The Real Thing
The Reverberator
Roderick Hudson
Sir Dominick Ferrand
A Small Boy and Others
Some Short Stories
The Tragic Muse
The Turn of the Screw
Washington Square
What Maisie Knew
The Wings of the Dove ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Incomplete, Whimsical, Fine
This is far from complete.

It's missing a novel or two and many short stories. It seems not to have James's literary criticism of continental authors, though it has his HAWTHORNE. Some specifics: it's missing THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA, a full-length novel. It's missing THE SPOILS OF POYNTON, a famous short novel. It's missing many of the lesser-known short stories. James wrote twelve volumes of short stories. I'd guess about three volumes' worth of his best-known short stories and nouvelles is included here.

The collection seems to have been prepared in great haste; THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY appears twice in the table of contents, though only once in the collection; the point of the double listing, if any, is to give you a chance to go directly to Volume II, though if you go to Volume I you get another table of contents that will also take you to Volume II. These books use CAPITAL LETTERS for italics, in the Gutenberg way, and might well be "complete" in the sense that somebody in a big rush downloaded every freebie by James she could find on the net.

The stories "Brooksmith," "The Real Thing," "The Story of It," "Flickerbridge" and "Mrs. Medwin" appear in a collection called SOME SHORT STORIES. This part of COMPLETE is also a separate Kindle collection, available alone, in the weird Kindle way, for $.99 or $1.99 or $2.99. "The Real Thing" appears elsewhere in this so-called COMPLETE, but the other stories from SOME SHORT STORIES do not. THE FINER GRAIN, James's last short story collection from 1910, appears here complete. There are no other complete short story collections, though there are quite a few stories from them.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY is James's rewrite for the New York Edition and has his Preface to that edition as well. The collection also has WASHINGTON SQUARE, which was not included in the New York Edition, so it's eclectic, which makes up for its being hasty and careless.

Given all that, it's an excellent bargain: it has almost all the novels and most of the well-known novellas and short stories, including "The Pupil," "The Aspern Papers," "The Beast in the Jungle," "The Jolly Corner," and so on. For three dollars you can't go wrong. Not a lot of embarrassing typos.

On the other hand, I just checked Project Gutenberg, from which you can download to your Kindle free. As far as I can see, it has everything this COMPLETE has, including the SOME SHORT STORIES collection, and it has more, like the story "In the Cage" which this collection does not include. And free is certainly a lower price than three dollars, if you're willing to do the downloading (more than twenty separate downloads), or to wait till you want a particular work to go and get it. This COMPLETE just saves you some trouble, but I still say it's worth it. You never know when you might get stuck in the airport by a volcano and need to have lots of Henry James right there with you.



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Product Description
"The Portrait of a Lady" tells the compelling and ultimately tragic tale of a beautiful young American woman's encounter with European sophistication. Set principally in England and Italy, we follow Isabel Archer's fortunes as a variety of admirers vie for her hand. Her choice will be crucial, and she is not wanting for advice, whether from the generous-spirited Ralph Touchett or the charming but rootless Madame Merle... ... Read more