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

Customer Reviews (1)

A Great Deal, for James lovers and newbies
This is a tremendous book - some of the greatest stories ever written, attractively packaged and reasonably priced.These are not really "short stories", as most of them are longer than 50 pages, andthey all require careful attention, but the effort is well worth it. Whilesome are better than others, there is not a weak story in the book. ... Read more

Product Description
After living abroad for 20 years, Henry James returned to his native America and travelled down the East Coast from Boston to Florida. This a journal describing his feelings on the rediscovery of the New York of his childhood, and the growth of modern commercial America. He muses on Thoreau, Hawthorne and Emerson; in Washington, he finds a cityscape devoid of spiritual symbols; in Richmond, thoughts of the civil war haunt him. Published in 1907, this journal also served as a farewell address to the country James would never live in again.Amazon.com Review
To be an American is, as Henry James famously observed, a "complex fate."But complexity was that rococo master's stock-in-trade, which may explainwhy he returned to his native country in 1904 after an absence of more than20 years. To be sure, he was interested in a Jamesian walk down memorylane, with its full quota of meditative hairsplitting. Yet he also meant totake advantage of his hybrid status as a Europeanized American. "I made noscruple," James explains in his introduction, "of my conviction that Ishould understand and should care better and more than the most earnest ofvisitors, and yet that I should vibrate with more curiosity ... than thepilgrim with the longest list of questions." Vibrate he did, in the ornateand extraordinary periods of his late phase, and the result was aone-of-a-kind travel book, The American Scene.

James opens his book with an impressionistic overture, which can beslightly off-putting: he seems too intent on leaping beyond the drydonnée of American life into pure abstraction. But readers shouldn'tbe discouraged. Even in the opening pages the author manages some brilliantsnapshots, like this description of New Hampshire's Saco River: "The rich,full lapse of the river, the perfect brownness, clear and deep, as ofliquid agate, in its wide swirl, the large indifferent ease in its pace andmotion, as of some great benevolent institution smoothly working; all this,with the sense of the deepening autumn about, gave I scarce know whatpastoral nobleness to the scene, something raising it out of the reach ofeven the most restless of analysts." And once James begins his journeyproper up and down the Eastern seaboard, he delivers one amazing page afteranother. He doesn't, of course, care for everything he sees--theskyscrapers of Manhattan strike him as vertical monstrosities, and he letsloose with more than one politically incorrect shaft at the minoritypopulation.

What appalls him the most, though, is the Almighty Dollar, which heperceives as "the preliminary American postulate," the very bedrock of NewWorld life: "This basis is that of active pecuniary gain and of activepecuniary gain only--that of one's making the conditions so triumphantlypay that the prices, the manners, the other inconveniences, take theirplace as a friction it is comparatively easy to salve, wounds directlytreatable with the wash of gold." Some will argue that the fussbudgetauthor had spent too much time in England, where money remained adirty word until after the Second World War. Others may find his diagnosiseerily prescient. In any case, The American Scene remains requiredreading for anybody interested in U.S. history, Henry James, or theincredible evolution of the compound sentence. --James Marcus ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Style:Overblown Bombast. Content:None
This will not be typical James-bashing. Lots of people like Jemes, and I am (albeit ambivalently) one of them.But THE AMERICAN SCENE reads as if it were written by Shakespeare's Polonius.It is verbose, abstract, repetitious, precious, and pedantic.Whenever he deigns to try, actually try, to describe a person, place, or thing, he inevitably gets it wrong.Most of the time, though, it is just James head-tripping as he moves from Pullman to Pullman, hotel to hotel, eventually coming to the (solipcistic) conclusion that America's very epicenter is Pullmans and hotels -- and, of course, that the two are the same thing.He is a little like Baudrillard touring the American West -- missing everything that's really THERE, while boring us to death with his trying-too-hard, impressionistic "sensibility."He is only interested in himself, in his "takes," and he is ludicrous in his constant lament that this particular subject (early twentieth-century America) isn't good enough for his talents.He is J. Alfred Prufrock staring in frightened disgust at "the people, my dear, the people" from his train windowHe is like the man in Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" who "rode over Connecticut in a glass coach [while] the only thing moving was the eye of the blackbird."Indeed.For James never really moves either.The only thing moving is his overheated free-associating mind and his hand as it cranks out ream after ream of contentless blithering.

A Great Sensibility
One of the great sensibilities of American Literature, self-exiled to the Continent, returns to peruse the great naturalistic theater of his nativity, conversing with apples, musing on the Civil War, and wondering where he would be if he had exiled himself in his own native land... had remained to register the Civilization of the Adolescence of the United States. This is the perfect bookend to "The Education of Henry Adams".

Great passages and moments abound. This is prose of such beauty and delicacy that it is like reading sculpture.
The Bernini of travel literature.

One terrible passage ruins this book for me
James is a great literary virtuoso, in certain ways the most sophisticated and complex America has had. His intricate intelligence is complemented by an unequaled descriptive power, and a mastery of language, second to none. How difficult then to come across the passage which ruins this book for me. This is James description of the immigrant Jews on the East Side.It is the observation of the sterile aristrocatic owner of Anglo-Saxon civilization who looks with contempt and horror at the poor swarming sweatshop crowd threatening to steal his private inheritance from him.
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Short excerpt: He was a young man of a contemplative and speculative turnand this was his first visit to Italyso that if he dallied by the way he should not be harshly judged. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Oh, Henry!
I wish that I had met (main character) Bernie Loungeville in the 20's... riding across Europe in a traincar... what an interesting trip that would have been.

One of James' Lost Works
I am so glad that this has been released on Kindle!Henry James is one of my favorite authors and I had so much trouble finding this title in print.A wonderful read, and interesting view of the times and mores of that era.

Confident early-James
One of Henry James' earlier works, Confidence (1879) is set in the familiar territory of young rich Americans on extended trips in Europe, making friendships and romantic acquaintances with other Americans in the expatriate society that has been established in the glamorous settings of Italy, Germany, Switzerland and France.Less melodramatic than his previous novel, The American, and therefore showing less of the influence of European writers, Confidence rather establishes familiar Jamesian themes and explores ideas that contrast European Old World and American society, albeit in a style that is rather more light-hearted that his more notable later works, with the advantage however that it is still entertaining and more readable than some of the latter-day novels.

The story is centred on Bernard Longueville, a young man travelling freely around Europe, sketching and painting, who meets two fellow Americans in Siena - a Mrs Vivian and her daughter Angela, who he sketches while she inadvertently poses picturesquely outside a church waiting for her mother.Bernard expresses his admiration for the young woman and offers her the sketch, but is not so delicately rebuffed by the rather defensive and dismissive young woman.A few weeks later, Bernard receives a letter from his friend Gordon Wright in Baden Baden, exclaiming that he is in love and wants to be married.Bernard rushes to visit his friend and discovers that the object of his affections is none other than the same young woman he painted in Siena.

The majority of the novel explores at length Bernard's attempts to comprehend the actions and motives of Angela Vivian, a young lady who does not act like other society girls such as their rather feather-headed travelling companion Blanche Evers.This attempt to get to the bottom of this strange but undeniably fascinating young woman is initially on the request of his friend Gordon, but Longueville has difficulty coming to terms with his own feelings for Miss Vivian.

Confidence is a slight work by James, a little longer than it needs to be, but witty and entertaining all the same, delighting in the "intellectual fencing" that goes on in the realm of human interaction, relationships and communication, seeking to find truth in the less than precise - and sometimes even contradictory and deceptive - use of language.James manages to do this without over-elaboration, using some nice allusions and metaphors (losing himself to a bout of gambling, although successful, Bernard at one point realises that contrary to the impression of controlling his actions, "he had not been playing - he had been played with"), and without the extravagant verbosity, over-analysis and sometimes unendurable length of his latter works. ... Read more

Product Description
Washington Square is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, domineering father. The plot of the novel is based upon a true story told to James by his close friend, British actress Fanny Kemble. The book is often compared to Jane Austen's work for the clarity and grace of its prose and its intense focus on family relationships.
Readers have sufficiently enjoyed the book to make it one of the more popular works of the Jamesian canon.
"Everybody likes Washington Square, even the denigrators of Henry James," wrote critic Donald Hall, and most other commentators have echoed the sentiment. Although James himself regarded the novel with near contempt, readers have enjoyed its linear narrative technique, its straightforward prose (far removed from the convoluted language of James's later career), and the sharply etched portraits of the four main characters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (54)

Catherine the assertive
About twenty years ago, assertiveness training was all the rage. Catherine Sloper uses all the techniques of assertiveness, humbly standing by her own point of view no matter how much pressure is put on her. This is true from the first page of the book to the last; her assertiveness at last makes her a little cruel, which is not surprising in the daughter of such a cruel father. But she remains honest and true to herself.

Henry James didn't include this story in the New York Edition selection of his best works, perhaps because he explains outright that Morris Townsend is a fortune hunter and in other ways tips off the reader to many of his characters' motivations.

He's subtle about Catherine, though. You can feel so sorry for her you never notice she's by far the strongest person in the book.

Meanwhile the book is slambang fast-paced for a romance novel. It never gets to the bedroom, but the people who say nothing happens must be pretty hungry for happenings. The suitor gets the heroine to fall in love. The father checks up on the suitor. The aunt has midnight meetings with the suitor. The suitor and the heroine meet while the father is away. The father offers the daughter the equivalent of half a million dollarsa year after his death just for her promise never to marry the suitor. The suitor quarrels with her and leaves. The suitor comes back -- all of this in about 160 pages, and I skipped the trip to Europe where the father half strands his daughter in lonely, scary country.

Don't miss this one.

Who needs enemies?
James is an emotionally insightful and understated author.Re-reading "Wahsington Squre" reminded me how of that.Catherine is an average 1870's New Yorker in every way except one; she's an heiress.Her mother died when she was very young leaving her $10,000 a year.She's set to inherit double that amount from her doctor father.It seems the money is important to everyone but her.Her Aunt Pennyman, her surrogate mother, urges her to encourage Morris, a fortune hunter.Since Catherine's inexperienced and not considered pretty or accomplished or particularly intelligent she's easy pickings when Auntie and would be bridegroom coral her.Her father on the other hand see's clearly that Morris' main desire is Catherine's money.He does everything he can to prevent the union even whisking her to Europe for a year.This is a bittersweet tale where no one is genuinely concerned for Catherine not even herself.With friends and family like this who needs enemies?

I know people sometimes have problems reading James because of his complex writing style."Washington Square", along with "Portrait of a Lady', is his most accessible book in my opinion."Washington Square" is also a much shorter than his other major works.

Misplaced passions
In contrast to James's earlier novels, where European and American ideals are often embodied in the form of beautiful women of superficiality on one side and less attractive women of substance on the other (with the male figures torn between the respective attractions of each), in Washington Square (1880), James follows his more nuanced and intriguing characterisation of Daisy Miller (1878) with another fascinating female protagonist - a quite plain and ordinary heroine - and finds in her another means to look at social attitudes.

Catherine Sloper is the daughter of an eminent and respected widower doctor who lives at Washington Square in New York.She's not clever, not pretty and a bit of a glutton for cream cakes, but she is clearly good, obedient and docile.These aren't qualities that Dr Sloper believes will result in a distinguished marriage, and he reluctantly accepts the fact, leaving his daughter's upbringing and education in the hands of his sister Mrs Penniman, a widow.At the ripe old age of 22, Catherine, shy, sensitive and of a delicate disposition, remains unmarried and indeed uncourted.

When a young man shows interest in his daughter, Dr. Sloper is initially amused, but suspicious of the fact that Morris Townsend has no money, no position and appears to be living off his married sister, who herself is not at all wealthy, and seeing no attraction in his own daughter other than the dowry and inheritance that she will come into, he takes a great dislike to the young man and opposes any suggestion of a marriage.Mrs Penniman however has romantic ideas about a secret union and tries to encourage both parties to go against her brother's wishes.Poor Catherine seems to be caught in the middle with no will or volition of her own.

Washington Square is not the most impressive Henry James, but it's a slim little novel that is delightfully twisted in its own way, and neatly and satisfactorily wrapped up as ever with James, who never goes against the tone of his stories.It's very much a "talkie" book - everyone has meetings with everyone else and has a frank conversation, believing they are being honest and upfront, with the best interests of Catherine at heart, but in reality, they care for nothing more than themselves, their own sense of self-importance and self-interest and how they are regarded in society if Catherine has no concerns for it herself.It's in the absence of any volition on the part of the rather nondescript Catherine that both Mrs Penniman and Dr. Sloper (and to a large extent even Morris Townsend as well) go as far as enacting on her behalf the passions she appears to lack - passions that prove to be false and misplaced, while Catherine remains true.

Washington Square is a popular James novel for its romantic novelistic touches, even if it was never a favourite of the author himself.It's far from the strongest Henry James novel, not even of his earlier work, but the characterisation is well observed, never giving in to standard expectations, and carried through realistically - and almost cruelly - to the end.Catherine (along with the aforementioned Daisy Miller) is at least one of James's most interesting female characters of this period - one that seems to operate outside the normal binary distinctions one finds in early James works.

Qaint Read
Washington Square by Henry James is a good story which I bought for an English College class. I didn't particularly like how most of the story was concentrated on the home setting of the "Washington Square" part of town, but hey that's what the book is called right? For those wanting a slow but interesting classic read I recommend it.

Great reading
Just finished reading Washington Square by Henry James. A masterpiece of character sketching of an autocratic all knowing father and a devoted daughter who shows an astonishing strength of mind when pushed to the limit of endurance by both her lover and her father. What a page turner this book turned out to be even though nothing happens in terms of events. The absence of the mother in Catherine's case adds to the tragedy of the situation. The mother is role is replaced by that of a silly and cunning aunt whose character is the only one that seems hard to believe. One is happy that the patriarch Dr. Sloper with all his money power is snubbed in the end and even his threat to cut catherine off from her inheritance doesnt quite give him the satisfaction he craves " to have done the right thing". A celebration of womanhood and a must read for everyone.

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Product Description
After her parents' bitter divorce, young Maisie Farange finds herself shuttled between her selfish mother and vain father, who value her only as a means for provoking each other. And when both take lovers and remarry, Maisie - solitary, observant and wise beyond her years - is drawn into an increasingly entangled adult world of intrigue and sexual betrayal, until she is finally compelled to choose her own future. Published in 1897 when Henry James was becoming increasingly experimental with narrative technique and fascinated by the idea of the child's-eye view, "What Maisie Knew" is a subtle, intricate yet devastating portrayal of an innocent adrift in a corrupt society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Good Literature, Average Story
This is a well thought effort by James where he tries to introduce a symmetrical relationship between two divorces parents- who each try to use the daughter as a pawn - plus the new partners of each parent. There are four primary characters plus the daughter Maisie and an older housekeeper or nanny Mrs. Wix, and a few minor characters. The book is a bit like a play with a few characters and concentrates on their dialogue.

The heart of the story is what does Maisie think of the situation and how does she deal with it. As a character is the information too sophisticated for her - or does the story fit with a girl such as Maisey.
That is, can she as a character be expected to understand the situation?

Obviously, Henry James put some thought into creating and writing the story and it has a certain mathematical symmetry. Saying that, the prose is sometimes a bit too complicated and the story lacks drama and passion.

It is the sort of book that is easy to put down and it is not a page turner.

Hence 4 stars.

Maisie, light of my life, fire of my loins
Doh!I meant Lolita.Well, I think that Maisie is a protyope for Lolita.She adapts to being shifted around by her parents and their various lovers by becoming something of a nymphette herself with Daddy Claude.This is a must read for all of us Nabakov fans.I'm quite sure he read it too.

The Corruption of Maisie
WHAT MAISIE KNEW is probably the weirdest novel by Henry James. He had already written of seamy themes before this, but now he writes a variation of one of his favorite themes--that of the corruption of the innocent. Maisie is a young female child, perhaps six years old whose parents are getting divorced. In the best of situations divorce hits hard, and this was far from the best. Maisie's parents, Beale and Ida Farange are morally depraved and care not a whit for the welfare of their daughter. Maisie is a good-natured child who wants only to be loved by the parents she loves. Maisie is the prototypical Jamesian innocent about to be plunged into a maelstrom of decay.

The terms of the divorce allow Maisie to live with each parent at six month intervals, and this she does. It is what she sees and happens to her that begin to cloud Maisie's moral universe. To begin with when she stays with her father, his friends paw her in ways that smack of sexual abuse. Maisie's mother, Ida, hires a governess, Miss Overmore, to care for Maisie. Soon enough Miss Overmore begins an affair with Maisie's father, Beale, ultimately marrying him. Ida follows suit by marrying her lover, Sir Claude. So now Maisie must adjust to a set of step parents. Claude's interest in his step-daughter verges on the incestuous--indeed later on when Maisie is thirteen, she outright propositions him.Ida hires a new governess, Mrs. Wix, to take the place of the erstwhile Miss Overmore. Mrs. Wix is a decent elderly woman who truly loves Maisie and tries to inculcate in her a moral center of goodness. This sense of goodness is put to the test immediately, when Maisie's remarried parents begin a new dance of musical lovers.

As Maisie ages toward young girlhood, she shows signs that she has well learned the lessons of moral depravity that abound. She has no problem adjusting to a series of new adults zipping in and out of her life as parents, step parents, and lovers of parents. Maisie even makes it easy for these newcomers to pull the wool over the eyes of their cuckolded partners by making suggestions to facilitate what is by now a familiar routine or illicit romances.By the end of the novel, a thirteen year old Maisie desires Sir Claude as her own lover. Mrs. Wix, when she hears of this, angrily demands of Maisie what has happened to the sense of moral decorum that she thought was by now firmly instilled in Maisie. The answer, of course, is that the sense of propriety was doomed from the start since Maisie early on learned the difference between words of decorum and deeds of decorum. The Maisie at the end of WHAT MAZIE KNEW suggests that children--or adults for that matter--need a ongoing foundation of goodness to show that the ugliness they may see unfolding around them need not envelop them.

Developing Moral Sense
Henry James' 1907 WHAT MAISIE KNEW provides deep psychological insight into a young girl's predicament, as a result of her parents' bitter divorce in Edwardian England.Inspired by a friend's comments on the "shuttlecock" lifestyle of a divorced child in the vicious game of spousal revenge, this novel studies the harmful existence of an innocent victim of a joint custody dispute.Even at the tender age of seven, Maisie realizes the wisdom of playing dumb.Although she reports little back to the opposing sides, Maisie keenly observes and thoughtfully listens to all that occurs in both her uncomfortable biospheres.Eventually she adopts the simple policy of not telling--thus refusing to provide more fuel for animosity on either side.

As in THE GOLDEN BOWL--a lengthy novel dealing with the marital and emotional battles among a very limited cast of characters--this shorter work could easily be adapted for the stage, as the chapters fall naturally into Scenes.James' protracted dialogues between Maisie and the impassioned adults who dispute her parenting rights would be delicious to dramatize, although readers would lose the private psychological depth as Maisie copes with increasingly new information.She reconciles her maturing lucid udnerstanding to the empowered adults in her universe with private schemes to protect one or the other parent and later, step-parent.

These intense colloquies are designed both to elicit information re events which have occurred offstage, and to stir Maisie to the brink of definitive action--which will directly effect the five adults whom we assume are most interested in her welfare: Beale Farange, Ida Farange, Sir Claude, Miss Overton, and Mrs. Wix.Little Maisie unwittingly serves as a catalyst for adult passion, while she secretly exults in bringing her favorite people together. One of the great literary ironies of this novel springs from the unexpected separations which her warm-hearted meddling precipitates.To her childlike logic, being Free is the most desirable status for formerly married persons--free to love and marry whom they choose--free to make a cherished home for her and to ease their own heartache.

Maisie is further isolated from children, even girls her own age; thus she is left to puzzle out the world using only her keen observation of adult interactions.But how can the lonely girl truly develop a sense of morality--at least by Edwardian standards?Is she herself Free to choose her new and permanent step-parents?Does she have the right to demand that the adults who love her make extreme sacrifices--just to retain her presence and loyalty?Does Maisie at 12 know what is best for herself?Which path will she ultimately choose?Her final decision will impact the lives of three far-from-blameless but well-meaning adults.Maise at 12 is too worldy-wise to indulge in Child's Play. This absorbing work is truly Vintage James.

Several Turns of the Screw
What hubris to review a work by such a major novelist as Henry James, even though WHAT MAISIE KNEW may not be one of his major novels! All the same, a review can perhaps be useful in two regards: by commenting on this particular edition, and by suggesting how the novel might appeal to those familiar with other James works but not this one.

The Penguin Classics paperback is crisply printed, comfortable in the hand, and well annotated. There is also an excellent essay by Paul Theroux. It gives too much away, I think, to be read as an introduction, but it does make a helpful afterword. If you do read the essay first, which is how it is printed, it may seem that Theroux has revealed virtually the entire plot, but in fact this is not so. James's narrative exposition is unusually swift in this book, and a lot happens very quickly, but his main interest lies in exploring the psychological depths of the situation that he has established; there is a distinct change of gear at roughly the halfway point of the book.

As Theroux points out, the novel is generally considered a transitional work between James's earlier style and his later one. Theroux also locates this gear-change at the point where James ceased writing in longhand and started dictating his novels to a stenographer -- a crisis described so well by Colm Toibin in his biographical novel, THE MASTER. The first half of the book shows a leanness of style and also a great sense of humor not often associated with the author. But the book's premise is intrinsically comic: Maisie, a five-year-old girl, observes the doings of the adults around her as she is shipped from household to household in consequence of her parents' divorce, as the parents take lovers and remarry, and then as virtually everybody else in the story takes other lovers. The humor comes from the fact that while Maisie understands so little at first, the adult reader quickly picks up what is going on. The spider symmetries of the expanding web of sex make a formal pattern as clear and intricate as a dance, illuminated by James's dry wit and his beautiful ability to see through childish eyes.

Several things change at the half-way point. Maisie becomes old enough to understand a little more. The adults whom she had previously observed from below now become more conscious of her as a potential ally and start using her unscrupulously to further their own ends. Twists of the plot which had at first seemed only amusing now appear as quite nasty turns of the screw, as Maisie's affections and loyalties are forced into the vise. Questions of morality come to the fore, and eventually dominate the action. The narrative tone also changes; although Maisie's knowledge and moral awareness develops considerably, James is forced into using his own voice to describe it, as though Maisie herself has lost the words to follow her own farewell to childhood.

The reference above to THE TURN OF THE SCREW is deliberate, for WHAT MAISIE KNEW (1897) seems almost like a preliminary draft for the more famous story, published in the following year. Yes, there are differences: this is comic rather than tragic, complicit rather than mysterious, and much less hermetic. The child heroine appears to come through with more wisdom and less trauma than the situation might have caused. But the final scene is astonishingly close to the ending of the later story: a struggle for control of a once-innocent child waged between a humble governess and two charismatic figures who exert a powerful hold both on the child and on each other. Only the ending is different, though no less worth waiting for. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good Vibes!?!
The 'Reverberator' is not, as some readers might feverishly suppose, a hand-held device for erotic auto-stimulation, nor is it one of those fashionable quivery armchairs. No, it's the name on the masthead of an American tabloid, a racy gossip sheet, for which Mr. George Flack is the Parisian correspondent. The only vibrations you'll experience while reading this 1888 novella will be the shaking of your sides at Henry James's wry satire. Mr. Flack is the driving anti-hero of this tale, a prophetic verbal 'paparazzo' of sensationalist journalism, a man with a vision of the vulgar times we have to admit to be ours; speaking to a young woman he hopes to impress, he says: "You ain't going to be able any longer to monopolize any fact of general interest, and it ain't going to be right you should; it ain't going to be possible to keep out anywhere the light of the Press... We'll see who's private then, and whose hands are off, and who'll frustrate the people -- the People that wants to know. That's a sign of the American people that they do want to know..." Mr Flack is the obnoxious harbinger of People Magazine, and of the politics of exposé and outright defamations that degrades American democracy today. The changing societal modes of privacy versus publicity are central themes of the two novellas James published together in his mid career, "The Reverberator" and "A London Life".

All the principal characters of The Reverberator are Americans in Paris. Mr. Flack's object of admiration is the winsome Francie Dosson, in Paris with her plain but ambitious older sister Delia and their wealthy retired father. The Dossons, to put it plainly, are rubes. Mr. Dosson is as culturally and intellectually blank as John Locke's slate; his only claim to any specific personhood has been his knack for making money through investments. Delia is 'horridly' declassé, vulgar to her toes. Francie is unaccountably beautiful and graceful, but she is exactly what modern observers would call an "airhead". Flack introduces her to yet another American in Paris, the 'rising' impressionist painter Waterlow, for whom Francie agrees to pose though she finds his paintings bizarre. At Waterlow's studio, another 'American' enters the story: Gaston Probert, the scion of a Catholic family that migrated to France from the Carolinas in flight from abolition and democracy. The Proberts have wealth, still based in America, and have married into the staunchly reactionary French Legitimist aristocracy. They are the stiffest of snobs, but young Gaston is at sea over his own identity, unsure of his true national character and of his manly worth on the terms of either culture. Each character in this novella is simultaneously a stinging caricature and yet a perfectly plausible individual. The romantic tussle that results from their chance encounter reveals each of them to be exactly who they seem, even when they aren't quite capable of knowing themselves.

The Reverberator is a brilliant study of characters and a well-paced comic tale. Henry James's wit, to be sure, often takes the form of syntactical feints and pirouettes. Ah reckin thet sorta wit ain't fer ev'body ... and perhaps this accounts for the diffuse prejudice among readers today that James is a 'difficult' writer, more work than play. It's not so. "The Reverberator" and its companion "A London Life" are highly entertaining, even as they dig psychologically under the surface of ordinary human relations.

Yes, there is such a thing as bad publicity.
In our time, socialites, celebrities and people "famous for being famous" hire publicists and are content to have their private lives made fodder for the public press. Indeed, they are often complicit in the revelation of the most intimate details of their lives and seem to agree with the saying that "no publicity is bad publicity".

Henry James would be shocked. Simon Nowell-Smith points out in his introduction to my edition of this novel James' reaction to a public report of a private conversation between Julian Hawthorne and James Russell Lowell; he called it a "beastly and blackguardly betrayal". But he took an incident in which a young American who had been admitted into Venetian society wrote an account of that society for a New York newspaper, and was widely excoriated in Venice for so doing, and turned it into this charming novel.

The Dossons, father and two daughters, serious Delia and flighty Francie, are Americans in Paris. Coming over, they had made the acquaintance of George Flack, a journalist whose job is to find stories for an American 'society-paper'. He has attached himself to the Dossons, showing them Paris, while smoking Mr. Dosson's cigars, spending his money, and having a flirtation with Francie. He introduces her to the expatriate Impressionist portraitist, Charles Waterlow (possibly based on John Singer Sargent?) who begins to paint her portrait. During the sittings, she meets a young man, Gaston Probert, an American who had never been in America, having been born and raised in France, his father a "Gallomaniac", his sisters having married into French society (two into the nobility). Inevitably, Francie and Gaston fall in love, and, after her charm overcomes some familial objections of the Proberts, they become engaged.

All is going swimmingly, Francie is taken into the bosom of the Proberts, learning the ways of French society, until Gaston heads to the United States to take care of some business for his family, as well as for Mr. Dosson. While he is away, George Flack re-appears. One lesson Francie has not learned is that a young engaged woman does not go out alone with a young man who is not her betrothed. But she takes the view that Flack is an old acquaintance and what's the harm? The harm turns out to be that he, by judicious questioning and saying he merely wants to write about Waterlow's painting of her, sets her chattering about her fiancé's family, and the resultant newspaper story causes a storm. Francie still cannot quite understand the harm she has done. "I thought he would just speak about my being engaged and give a little account; so many people in America would be interested." What she doesn't grasp is that the Proberts do not want "people in America" (or France, for that matter) to be interested in their private lives.

"The Reverberator" was first written as a serial in early 1888, and published in book form shortly thereafter. James extensively revised it twenty years later, but my edition is that of the 1888 book. Nowell-Smith's introduction, which compares this and the later edition, shows that the revisions were not an improvement! The ease of language here, very different from James' later "tortuosity of expression", perfectly expresses the wide-eyed naïveté of Francie. ... Read more

Product Description
'You must paint her just like that ...as the Tragic Muse' Suggests one of James' characters to Nick Dormer, the young Englishman who, during the course of the novel, will courageously resist the glittering Parliamentary career desired for him by his family, in order to paint. His progress is counterpointed by the 'Tragic Muse' of the title, Miriam Rooth, one of James' most fierily beautiful creations, a great actress indifferent to social reputation, and triumphantly dedicated to her art. In portraying the conflict between art and 'the world' which is his novel's central idea, James engaged obliquely with current debates on the new aestheticism of Pater and Wilde and on the nature of the actor's performance. Through the living complexity of his protagonists he reveals how much, as Philip Horne puts it, 'to take art seriously as an end in itself ...is still a provocative course'. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Why is this classic only available in an "e"edition.
I am appalled that this fabulous novel is only available new in thisbarebones edition, no intro, no scholarly apparatus.What happened to the lovely Penguin edition????? What is happening to literature?
The novel itself is a gem, the only (that I know) serious literary representation of the development of a theatre actress.

The Muse Is A Jealous God
In THE TRAGIC MUSE, Henry James broached the topic of art in what was for him a new perspective. Rather than merely write about art in a novel, he attempted to infuse his own guiding principles about art into a fabric that dared both James and the reader to ponder the rightful balance between art, its devotees, and one like himself who tried to use words as his easel to divorce himself from his appointed role of artist-novelist and gradually meld into that of his intended subject--art itself.

James' three primary characters collectively represent the discrete corners of the artistic triangle. At the lower left hand of the base is Nick Dormer, an Englishman who is torn between a career in politics (towards which his girlfriend Lady Julia relentlessly pushes him) and one in painting. At the lower right base is Nick's cousin Peter Sherringham, who is similarly split between his annointed career as a diplomat and one in the theater. Both Nick and Peter have reached a level of contented stasis with this push-pull ambivalence, at least until Miriam Rooth, the apex, appears to force them both into some serious considerations about the role of the artist in society. Nick and Peter like art but for them art is not primary, but in their attempts to discover just how close to primary it may be, their approaching the burning flame of art threatens their primary careers. They are talented enough in politics and diplomacy to survive quite nicely without art centering as a distraction, but neither is talented enough in art to survive well enough without their non-art careers as a distraction. Into this mix steps Miriam, a young and beautiful actress. Nick and Peter call her the "tragic muse" of the title. She is the living symbol of what both men see as the apotheosis of artistic sainthood. They can aspire to achieve with great effort and only with partial success what she can with no effort and total success. But to operate on such a god-like level is deceptively easy. To act and become someone else on the stage is no easy task; it requires constant and diligent devotion to one's art. James suggests that Miriam has made an informed choice, a trade-off between success on the stage and a life off it. Miriam is so good at her craft that both men are discouraged from becoming the paragon that they see her as. Her success on the stage is her failure off it. The tragedy of the title lies in the tacit acceptance that the unreality of artistic success makes the successfull practitioner increasingly more tragic with each new laurel earned. Nick and Peter see themselves as failures only because they do not reach the heights of Miriam. The irony is that they never learn that the rarified air of success on Mt. Olympus is a debilitating one, and that the price that one must pay to wear that laurel excludes one from meaningful human contact back on planet earth. Henry James in THE TRAGIC MUSE makes this point clear to the reader even if Peter and Nick never catch on.

The Lessons of the Master
In an interview, Vladimir Nabokov once spoke of the distinction Russians draw between a genius (such as Tolstoy), and a mere "talent", and the example Nabokov gave of the latter was Henry James. Nabokov never did rate James highly (nor Thomas Mann, Hemingway and many other undoubtedly great writers). Nabokov was of course mistaken. Henry James is one of the true geniuses of literature. His capacity to portray nuances of character through subtle changes of light and shade has never been equalled.

The later James style is notoriously dense, elliptical and difficult to read. And yet through this density, the Victorianisms of the language spoken by James' characters, the important - often critical - things that are only half spoken, and sometimes never spoken, James reveals characters facing moral and personal dilemmas of a kind that seem startlingly immediate to us. James' characters are always complex, rarely do what we expect them to, and are often as frustrating and intriguing as any "real" people.

The Tragic Muse is a lengthy discussion of the role of the artist in society, and the choices - sometimes hard choices - people make in becoming artists and leaving the conventional world behind. James certainly would have been conscious of these issues from his own career. And yet The Tragic Muse is often very funny, with very sharp, witty dialogue, amusing characters and an engrossing story.

I agree with the previous reviewer, who described it as an overlooked masterpiece. I rate it as highly as, say, The Ambassadors, one of James' final three great completed novels.

The later Henry James can be difficult going, and I have found these books to be a taste slowly acquired. I would therefore not recommend this book to readers new to James (instead I would suggest Washington Square, The Europeans or the Bostonians). However, once you have acquired the taste for James his prose style, frustrating as it sometimes is, becomes addictive, especially for the deep insights into character that he offers and the ability to conjure up reality through a seeming haze of words.

For those who enjoy reading Henry James - and, like Nabokov, not everyone does - this book is very highly recommended.

A Wonderful Surprise
This James novel is an overlooked masterpiece. I'm not entirely certain I don't like it every bit as much as the often praised "Wings of the Dove".

Art with a capital "A" is the subject at hand and Miriam Rooth (the Tragic Muse), Peter Sherringham and Nick Dormer all have their own way of coming to terms with the idea of a life given over to Art.

Favorite chapters are those on a visit to the Green Room of the Theatre Francaise and the magnificent Chapter XLVI.

Considering that James made his choice of a life given up to literature at a very early age, one can't help seeing this book as his apologia. And a grand one it is, too! ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
The best known works of Henry James in one collection with an active table of contents. Works include:

The Ambassadors
The Beast in the Jungle
Daisy Miller
The Portrait of a Lady
The Turn of the Screw
Washington Square
What Maise Knew
The Wings of the Dove ... Read more

Product Description
This Halcyon Classics ebook edition contains 24 collected novellas and short stories of noted Anglo-British author Henry James, including 'The Turn of the Screw.'Includes an active table of contents.

Contents:

A Passionate Pilgrim
Madame de Mauves
Daisy Miller
A Bundle of Letters
The Author of Beltraffio
A London Life
The Patagonia
The Liar
Mrs. Temperly
The Aspern Papers
The Pupil
The Middle Years
The Death of the Lion
The Coxon Fund
The Altar of the Dead
The Figure in the Carpet
The Turn of the Screw
In the Cage
Brooksmith
The Real Thing
The Story of It
Flickerbridge
Mrs. Medwin
The Beast in the Jungle

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An excellent Kindle version of Henry James Short Stories
The Halcyon Press in Houston Texas has recently started to publish eBooks formatted for the Kindle. This version works beautifully on the Kindle (and on Kindle for PC and for iPhone), and Volume 1 contains several of Henry James's best novellas and short stories.

Navigation from the Table of Contents is easy and accurate, and there are very few typographical errors in the text, a real accomplishment with an author who is master of the parenthetical phrase. Although I own a Kindle, I prefer both the free PC version and the free iPhone version of the Kindle; the ebook reads well on both devices, and its great fun to read ahead on my iPhone in the odd moment so that I can read aloud with easier comprehension for my listener later on.

I hadn't been a Henry James fan before I found this fine Kindle edition; in hard copy versions, the complexity of the sentences seemed off putting, and it was very easy to glide over yet another dependent (or even independent) clause, or to fall asleep only to awake three pages on with very little understanding of what had happened in my absence.

Reading James aloud changed all that: I need to vary my reading speed and style to help my wife understand the complex writing style. Read that way, with an enforced requirement of understanding what I was reading, has led to a very pleasurable reading and listening experience -- my wife is able to follow James's prose (as was I) -- and I greatly enjoyed discussing the complexity of his characters's development and motivations.

Your own enjoyment of these works will depend in great measure on your own pleasure in James's "impressionistic" style, and there is little I can add to increase that pleasure. But, our reactions to a a few of the works may be helpful to someone new to James.

Our favorite was "Daisy Miller" (a novella I remember from college days many years ago). This is a psychological description of a young woman's mind and an analysis of the traditional views of a society where she is a outsider.In a letter James said that Daisy is the victim of a "social rumpus" that goes on either over her head or beneath her notice. My wife liked the story very much; she was particularly impressed with the way James kept her guessing.

We liked "The Beast in the Jungle" much less, even though we understand that, as Wikipedia has it, the novella is "universally considered one of James' finest short narratives, this story treats appropriately universal themes: loneliness, fate, love and death." For us, it was terribly dragged out, we predicted almost every turn, and we found the ending anticlimatic.

As to the "Turn of the Screw", we didn't think it was a ghost story at all, but an ambiguous psychological study, and we found that there were too many elements that confused the story without adding meaning.

"The Pupil", a relatively short story, is a tragedy, the story of a emotional story of a precocious teenage boy with finer instincts growing up in a dishonorable family. We found the relationship between the boy and his tutor beautifully drawn by James, and the other characters, especially the boy's mother quite extraordinary.

Finally, we liked "The Aspern Papers" almost as much as "Daisy Miller". The story is based on a true story about a Shelley devotee who tried to get letters written by the poet. Venice, a city we both delight in, is beautifully described, the story maintains a high level of suspense, and the characters are drawn with care and real humanity.

Halcyon seems to have loaded up Volume I of this series with the best of James's short stories and novellas; The Henry James Collection II: 24 Novellas and Short Stories (Halcyon Classics) is nicely prepared for the Kindle, reads well on all three Kindle platforms, but none of the entries seem of the high quality of several of the works in Volume I. Perhaps Halcyon hopes readers will be converts to James through the riches of the first volume, and eager to move on to enjoy some of his lesser works.

As always in matters of taste, you may strongly disagree about the joys of reading Henry James, but one thing I am sure of, if you read fiction aloud, you will find James a surprisingly good text to practice your skills on. And this Kindle version is a great place to start.

Robert C. Ross 2010 ... Read more

Product Description
Kindle edition of James' classic work of short fiction with an active table of contents.

The short work is considered one of James' finest short narratives. It hits the universal themes of: loneliness, fate, love and death. The parable of John Marcher and his peculiar destiny has spoken to many readers who have speculated on the worth and meaning of human life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

For serious readers only
If you're prone to lazy reading this is not the book for you.Henry James "late style" of writing is challenging at best, forcing the reader to pick through agonizing sentences in order to uncover the meat of the story.But the reward, especially the final chapter, is worth the work.The conclusion is so beautifully phrased and poignant that your heart will ache.Maybe you'll wonder, as I did, whether or not you've made the most of your life or if you've been held back by fear.James insight into the human psychy is almost scary.He's able to analyze, then present, with great accuracy the way we work in our heads and most especially in our hearts. Tuck yourself up by the fire and give "The Beast in the Jungle" a couple of hours of your time.It will be worth it.

Dullest text ever written
"The Beast in the Jungle" is the most effective sleeping pill you are likely to find anywhere. I challenge any reader to go through this text in one sitting and not falling asleep or, at least, not to experiment a tremendous mind-numbing feeling. Of course, I haven't read all the books in the world, but I dare say that this is the most boring piece of writing ever conceived by anyone. I find it very hard to imagine something more awful than this. It's absolutely impossible, unsurpassable.

Henry James' style is so artificially conceited and pompous that you have to ask yourself if the trash he used to write wasn't a very calculated joke after all or if he's just trying to take the reader for a ride (a ride into a world of dullness and boredom, that is). The supposedly "psychological insight" of James is just a mere exercise in nothingness, the highest form of pretentiousness in its purest expression.

In this short???-story (James wasn't very strong on things like "precision" and "conciseness"), the terrible fate that seems to be in store for the main character after pages and pages of monotonous text, turns out to be that "nothing is to happen to him". Pathetic and childish. In my opinion, "The Beast in the Jungle" is the greatest proof that James was a dreadful writer (not to say "an insipid donkey").

Actually, James is so comical as to excite parody. In the old days H.G. Wells likened his prose to an hippopotamus pushing a pea and Ambrose Bierce said that James' work would benefit if someone took the pain to translate it into English. I personally agree with the two of them but, you know, many things that in the past have been judged as "ridiculous" or "stupid" are considered today, through some arbitrary process known as "reassessment of literary figures", as something pretty relevant and sophisticated. That's life, isn't it?.

"The Beast in the Jungle" is a poor story that serves James as an excuse for writing a lot and not to say anything significant. Completely worthless. In case I had to choose, I'd prefer to read a telephone directory instead.

Of course, this prime example of literary incompetence is regarded as a masterpiece by many scholars.

Well, each to his own... ... 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

Product Description
Celebrations of city streets; tranquil vistas of the countryside and seashore; enchanting images of the leisured classes in domestic interiors or at fashionable Parisian cafes - the work of the Impressionists gives pleasure to art lovers everywhere. But while Impressionism today may appear "natural" and effortless, contemporaries were shocked by the loose handling of paint and the practice of painting out-of-doors. In defiance of the conservative official Salon, the Impressionists - led by Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas - sought to capture the immediacy of experience. This comprehensive study brings together the most recent research on Impressionism. James Rubin makes accessible its philosophical, political and social context, from Baudelaire's conception to the painter of modern life, to the influences of photography, the burgeoning art market, and contemporary notions of gender and race. As well as the acknowledged masters, our attention is drawn to lesser-known Impressionists such as Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassat and Gustave Caillebotte. Rubin also examines the work of Paul Cezanne and his relationship to the group.Finally, the book explores the legacy of Impressionism and its enduring appeal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A great addition to a great series
James Rubin places Impressionism and the Impressionists at the heart of their times. He not only looks at Monet, Degas and Renoir, but also includes detailed studies of the movements lesser figures to give a clearpicture of the diversity of the Impressionist school ... Read more

Product Description
Spirited, beautiful young American Isabel Archer journeys to Europe to, in modern terms, "find herself." But what she finds there may prove to be her undoing, especially when an infinitely sophisticated lady plots against her. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Revisit Isabel
This is Henry James's masterpiece and he was aware of that as he wrote it. Many critics thought it had an ambiguous ending; or no ending at all and I agree. Therefore, I have started a sequel, no easy task, and in the process of writing it, I have started a blog to write about writing about it. I give background information on Henry James's writing life, my own problems writing a sequel to such an elaborate, psychological novel and how it "should" all turn out. I also link to Amazon books and films that have to do with this subject. See my blog at [...]. Please leave comments and let's begin to figure out where Isabel Archer Osmond's life should go. She's still in her twenties when the book ends. A lot of living to do yet.

James gave this story 5,000 revisions!
I am having difficulty writing this review because I did not like the protagonist one bit.Isabel Archer, so disturbingly beautiful, talented, and prize worthy (as she herself would have told you) that no man appears good enough. She turns down the marriage offer of a brilliant member of the English aristocracy, a handsome English Lord, extremely wealthy and well sought after, on the inverted snobbish pretext that she is not good enough for him, keeping him hanging on in the background, (having nothing better to do) along with another couple of suitors littered about, throughout the story.

Ralph Touchett, Isabel's indolent, sickly cousin, was my favorite character. He of course like everyone else in the story falls madly in love with Isabel, but he is so intelligent, kind, generous, and selfless, I found myself cheering for this character and hoping against hope that Henry James would spare his life in the end; he doesn't of course. The amorphous Pansy flits in and out of the story like a fairy. The perfect child, a character not fully developed by James. One feels all along that something terrible is going to happen to her, a bit like Beth in "Little Women" but nothing does. She is there as the key to the mystery, find out about her and you know it all.

Henry James, periphrastic as always, sometimes bores with his long descriptions setting the tone, the description of Madam Merle is a good example. This tedious character adds nothing to the story except just a little mystery. The man Isabel finally condescends to marry turns out to be more in love with himself than with her and even more so than she is with herself, so as in all good stories she gets her comeuppance, and well deserved too. I did enjoy his descriptions of the places I know in Italy, it took me back to my holidays in Florence, with mention of The Medici, and the wonderful Uffizi Gallery.Beautiful, beautiful, city, I wish you could see a photograph my husband took of The Arno at sunset!

I like Henry James, he tells a good story, he is among the greatest American writers. I especially liked his critique of Nathaniel Hawthorne, well worth the money for that little book. This, not so much, but you?Well I couldn't possibly comment.....

A masterpiece on human psychology
Reading this novel is like receiving a punch in the stomach - yet from an exquisitely gloved fist. If you like character-driven stories with explosive endings, this novel is for you.

James is a genius in charting the complexities of the human psyche. His predilection for characterization and psychological analysis over plot development is what drives this novel. In fact, there is a lot of "action" - yet confined to the emotional landscape of characters.

James' literary style is very dense and requires a measured pace of reading. If this becomes frustrating (as it did to me occasionally), it's best to read it in spurts. The richness of the novel demands leisurely consumption, like an elaborate French meal, to be appreciated piece by piece.

Here is an example of typical sentence construction:

[QUOTE] Like his appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it was based partly on his eye for decorative character, his instinct for authenticity; but also on a sense for uncatalogued values, for that secret of a "luster" beyond any recorded losing or rediscovering, which his devotion to brittle wares had still not disqualified him to recognise. Mrs. Osmond, at present, might well have gratified such tastes. The years had touched her only to enrich her; the flower of her youth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on its stem. [END QUOTE]

Despite its density The Portrait of a Lady is more accessible than James' later novels - including The Ambassadors (Oxford World's Classics) - and is a good place to start with this classic author.

The main delight of the novel is in the characters - they are all exquisitely crafted and richly draped. They each have their own set of vocabulary, nuances, visual imagery and body language - from the sharp tongued Henrietta Stackpole to the obedient and docile Pansy Osmond. The novel also has great moments of humour, thanks to James' alter ego Ralph Touchett.

My only critique is the heavy handed analysis at times, which slows down the pace of the novel, as well as James peculiar aversion to paragraphing - the author will often cluster entire timelines, conversations and observations into a single paragraph which spans several pages without interlude.

Ultimately, however the novel is a masterpiece of human characterization that touches on themes of duty versus independence, social custom versus freedom. Despite the lack of plot - or "architecture" as the author calls it - James is an extraordinary storyteller and the ending packs quite a punch.

This novel is best enjoyed without prior knowledge of the plot - so skip the summary on the back and dive right in!

8/10

What a Portrait He Writes [35]
The lady involved in the portrait is Isabel Archer, and the portrait is exquisitely ornate because of the literary genius of James.". . . [A]fter strolling about for some time, in a manner at once listless and restless, had seated herself on a garden-bench, within sight of the house, beneath a spreading beech, where, in a white dress ornamented with black ribbons, she formed flickering shadows of graceful and harmonious image."

Orphaned when she is ripe for marriage, Isabel is shipped to England in 19th century custom to live with a rich uncle who resides outside of London - Daniel Touchett - and his wife and charming son Ralph.While staying as their guest, her American conceptions evolve with European sophistication and she is compelled to learn much for someone so young and naive.In the midst of this educational/cultural immersion, she becomes charmed by her cousin, his best friend Lord Warburton and others.

It is then that her best friend from America, Henrietta Stackpole,comes across the seas to warn her not to marry a European.

While testing the waters, Isabel sees another family member die, her uncle, who leaves her a pot of money which guarantees this young princess all the creature comforts for the remainder of her life as well as those of her heirs. In this book authored in the latter art of the 19th century, we must ask: is this good news or bad news?What does being rich mean?James defines rich as "I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination."

At first, times are great.Isabel is also wooedby a wealthy American, Caspar Goodwood, and American turned European Gilbert Osmond. She is the cat's meow in London society.The battle for her hand gathers force, and she ultimately chooses the unanimously proclaimed poorest choice.And, from that moment forward, the book turns from gaiety of being wooed by extremely wealthy men, to a life of inhibition and oppression.Being the squelched subject of a totalitarian husband deprives anyone, even strong Isabel, to meet her imagination.

But, the fight goes on.As badly as her daily events may be, she is not prisoner to her own vices or sins. The bad people around her are so imprisoned.The good people around are not.But, it takes hundreds of pages for our heroine to realize which people are good and which are bad.And, not until the final hundred pages does the reader receive information as to why the bad people are bad.And, then we and Isabel discover that they are even worse than we could have conjectured.

Persistence abounds among her good people - who are the truest offriends.And amid that persistence lies tireless patience. Helping a good friend is not something done in a sprint, if the sprint derives the wrong result. Instead, James instructs us that ". . . she had given him the key to patience." A most valuable gift.

Amid the brilliant prose and evenly valiant dialogue, this book's plot jives and swiftly turns - each portion not just keeping, but gluing, the interest of the reader.I have read a few other novels by James, and they are good, But, the give-and-take throughout this novel and the seemingly perfect prose,describing everything from the person's face to a tea cup, make this my favorite of this all-time favorite author.

"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue."
When Isabel Archer, a bright and independent young American, makes her first trip to Europe in the company of her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, who lives outside of London in a 400-year-old estate, she discovers a totally different world, one which does not encourage her independent thinking or behavior and which is governed by rigid social codes. This contrast between American and European values, vividly dramatized here, is a consistent theme in James's novels, one based on his own experiences living in the US and England. In prose that is filled with rich observations about places, customs, and attitudes, James portrays Isabel's European coming-of-age, as she discovers that she must curb her intellect and independence if she is to fit into the social scheme in which she now finds herself.

Isabel Archer, one of James's most fully drawn characters, has postponed a marriage in America for a year of travel abroad, only to discover upon her precipitate and ill-considered marriage to an American living in Florence, that it is her need to be independent that makes her marriage a disaster. Gilbert Osmond, an American art collector living in Florence, marries Isabel for the fortune she has inherited from her uncle, treating her like an object d'art which he expects to have remain "on the shelf." Madame Serena Merle, his long-time lover, is, like Osmond, an American whose venality and lack of scruples have been encouraged, if not developed, by the European milieu in which they live.

James packs more information into one paragraph than many writers do into an entire chapter. Distanced and formal, he presents psychologically realistic characters whose behavior is a direct outgrowth of their upbringing, with their conflicts resulting from the differences between their expectations and the reality of their changed settings. The subordinate characters, Ralph Touchett, Pansy Osmond, her suitor Edward Rosier, American journalist Henrietta Stackpole, Isabel's former suitor Caspar Stackpole, and Lord Warburton, whose love of Isabel leads him to court Pansy, are as fascinating psychologically and as much a product of their own upbringing as Isabel is.

As the setting moves from America to England, Paris, Florence, and Rome, James develops his themes, and as Isabel's life becomes more complex, her increasingly difficult and emotionally affecting choices about her life make her increasingly fascinating to the reader. James's trenchant observations about the relationship between individuals and society and about the effects of one's setting on one's behavior are enhanced by the elegance and density of his prose, making this a novel one must read slowly--and savor. Mary Whipple
... Read more

Product Description
When wealthy Rowland Mallet first sees a sculpture by Roderick Hudson, he is astounded and pronounces it to be a work of genius, and is equally entranced by the sculptor's beauty, spirit and charisma. Wishing to give the impoverished artist the opportunity to develop his talent, he takes Roderick from America to Rome, where he becomes the talk of the city. But Roderick soon loses his inspiration and Rowland loses control of his protege, while both fall in love with women they cannot ever have. Can Roderick be saved from the path to self-destruction he seems set on? One of Henry James's first novels, "Roderick Hudson" (1875) is a compelling depiction of the artistic temperament and of a young man who, like Icarus, flies too close to the sun. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

He cannot endure the tea-party people; they bore him to death
Our title hero is a young artist from Massachusetts. He can't stand a life in provincial backwaters. The headline is a neighbor's description of his temperament. Lucky for him, he finds a way out, in the form of his own Professor Higgins.

Young Henry James was obviously fascinated with the Pygmalion theme. His first novel, Watch and Ward, later disowned by the master himself, was about a rich man who `adopts' a young girl and has her educated with the plan to make her his wife.
This second novel, published in 1875 and later called the first, has a wealthy man (who says he can not paint pictures, but he can buy them) decide to have his own personal artist by sponsoring the talented young sculptor. Alas, the project runs out of hand.
A key question in any similar situation of patronage is: how much good behavior can legitimately be demanded? What degree of controlling rights has the sponsor acquired in the process?

Roderick Hudson is that talented young sculptor, who doesn't quite know his dimensions and potential and who lives with his widowed mother in limited conditions in MA, only half-heartedly pretending to be trying to acquire an honest profession in a law firm. He is a bit of an empty-headed chatterbox. He also turns out to be an egomaniac.
He meets the rich idle young man, Rowland Mallet, who begins to think of him as a possible target for his charity urges. He gets the offer of going to Rome for training and artistic growth and getting paid in advance for a half dozen of his future works. This is essentially a stipend on a private basis, given unsolicited and in a rush.

It turns out that the sponsor, Rowland, is more in the center of attention than the title hero. From the start on, the narrator tells us more on Rowland than on Roderick. What we learn of Roderick is with Rowland, as if through his eyes, even if not narrated by him. (By the way, the similarity of the names is irritating.)
We learn that Rowland is an awkward mixture of strong moral impulse and restless aesthetic curiosity. He has an incorruptible and incorrigible modesty. He has a constitutional tendency towards magnanimous interpretations. And he is prone to meddling.
While on the ship to Europe Rowland has a shock: he learns that Roderick just got engaged to the woman whom Rowland had just started to think about for himself. Until the last line of the book, Rowland dreams of turning the table.
Roderick continues to exasperate. He is frivolous, a womanizer and he gambles. He has megalomaniac ideas about his talent and then suffers from working blocks. The story turns into a very entertaining and lively novel. It belongs into the category of novels where a plot summary can de-motivate. It sounds too much like contemporary pulp. But the beauty here lies in the details, in the texture, in the observations and characterizations.

James wrote it while living in Italy. Glimpses of the localities are part of the charm of the book. Foreigners are part of the localities. Most of the personnel of the story are American or other non-Italian. We get to meet the gorgeous but difficult Christina Light, later better known as Princess Casamassima, the heroine of a later novel. I am planning to read James in chronological sequence, but Christina might very well talk me into jumping ahead.

The Marble Faun Authenticated ...
... or the apotheosis of the American Romance! "Roderick Hudson" was Henry James's second published full-length novel and his last, I would say, in the shared literary idiom of his 19th predecessors. His final tribute, if you will, to the 'Gothic' romances of the Brontes and above all of Nathaniel Hawthorne. I don't believe many critics have linked "Roderick Hudson" to Hawthorne's "The Marble Faun", but the linkage is tight, even if James didn't intend any connection. I would include Herman Melville's grand dismal romance "Pierre" in the linkage, except that I'm doubtful James ever knew of it. Even though most of the narrative takes place in Roma, "Roderick Hudson" is a New England novel at heart.

Published in serial in 1875, "Roderick Hudson" was not received with any great plaudits, and it hasn't been treated with the most ample respect by later literary critics. It's unquestionably true that James 'survived' -- luckily for us -- to write a dozen better novels than this one, beginning with his next, "The American". And yet "Roderick Hudson" is a very fine piece of writing! If James's next ten novels had been just as good but no better, he would still rank as one of the masters of the genre. What falls short for this reader in "Roderick Hudson" might ironically be exactly what could make it most enjoyable for other readers; it's a tale of drastic Passion, in which the characters are Larger Than Life. The excitement I find in reading James's more mature novels is that the characters are never dramatically exaggerated. They may be exceptional, but only in a manner well grounded in their ordinariness. The dramatis personae of "Roderick Hudson" are as sculptural as the intertwined and tormented figures of the Laocoön. The story portrays an anguishing Love Quadrangle:

Roderick is a young self-taught sculptor of Genius ... the most meteoric genius-to-be of the Age, and the most insufferable narcissist ever bent on self-destruction.

Christina Light is 'the most beautiful woman in Europe', raised by her odious mother to become literally a Princess. And a 'princess' she is, in the current derogatory American sense of the title! I might wonder if James's earliest readers found her credible, but I have no doubt that readers today will know what to expect of her. She is the Britney Spears or Sharon Stone of her epoch. She will reappear, by the way, as a character in a later James novel, chastened by experience but no less destructively alluring. Roderick of course is infatuated with her to the point of obsession.

Mary Garland is the New England girl par excellence, the finely spirited and spiritually fine abandoned fiancée, whom the unworthy consider 'plain' but the worthy recognize instinctively as 'handsome'. Our Principal Character is one of the worthy.

That Principal Character is Rowland Mallet, a wealthy American with no calling of his own except to be reliable and generous. His spontaneous recognition of Roderick's 'genius', and his decision to support Roderick's development by transporting him to Europe and subsidizing him there, is the launching point of the novel. Rowland is not a first-person narrator but nonetheless the focal lens of the narrative and the catalyst of most events. He is of course hopelessly in love with Mary Garland but incapable of self-interested disloyalty to his protegé. Almost colorless, he is nonetheless "the most interesting man in the world" in any interpretation of this novel.

Henry James wrote "Roderick Hudson" under the spell of Italy, upon his first visit there, and the descriptive settings in Roma and Firenze are spellbinding. The whole story is operatic in its emotive lushness; stripped of its rich vocabulary and nuances of description, it could easily be rewritten as a Danielle Steele tear-jerker. I don't mean that as dispraise, but rather as the highest praise, that James could take such an 'excessive' drama and write such subtle psychological insights into it.

This novel is included in the Library of America volume "Henry james: Novels 1871-1880" , along with 'Watch and Ward', 'Confidence', 'The American', and 'The Europeans'. I've already reviewed the last two. Some readers/reviewers havemistakenly suggested that Henry James is 'difficult' dry intellectual fare. I hope to persuade "you" of the contrary; James is juicy fun to read.

Readable early James
Henry James's first full-length novel (1875) features a classic Jamesian situation, an entertaining, witty and tortuous examination of romantic feelings that are caught up in a frenzy of youthful impetuousness, ambition and artistic genius, complicated by the social expectations of others and the unfathomable workings of the female mind. If it isn't entirely successful on those terms, lacking the kind of precision that James would become better known for in later novels, there is however an interesting subtext to the story where James considers that other topic of interest to him regarding notions of identity from a European and an American perspective and whether there is any compatibility between them.

Such matters are considered not so much through the titular character as through the figure of Rowland Mallet, a young man from New England, with no fixed place in the world, no great ambitions, no woman or love in his life and no genius of his own. As a buyer and importer of European art however, he can however recognise genius in others and is particularly taken by an exquisite piece of sculpture by a young local man, Roderick Hudson. Believing that he can do something to encourage such talent, he proposes taking the young inexperienced man on an extended trip to Rome, taking him away from his law studies and the quiet dullness of New England life and hopefully through his patronage, see his ability mature towards delivering the masterpieces he is confident lie within.

Mallet almost immediately regrets his decision to leave Northampton however, since in the days before their departure he meets and is taken by Mary Garland, the demure daughter of a minister, a cousin of Roderick and his mother, but his feeling are further conflicted when the young sculptor, galvanised by the impending trip, himself proposes and becomes engaged to Miss Garland. Mallet's faith in Roderick's talent however proves to be well founded, and even though the young man shows a tendency towards dissipation while discovering the wonders of Europe, his ability flourishes during his stay in Rome, creating a number of works that are well received. Rowland must reluctantly accept the impulses and drives of artistic genius, but when Hudson threatens to throw it all away for the extraordinarily beautiful Christina Light, Mallet knows he must intervene and find a way of doing so that doesn't reveal or hinder his own interests.

Miss Light is a typically complex, beautiful and intriguing Jamesian heroine (and brought back for The Princess Casamassima), but here in his first novel he doesn't quite get to grips with her character. Hudson too is rather predictable in his playing the part of impetuous youth, while Mallet is a little more likeable and intriguing, but not particularly complex, hesitant, always maddingly reasonable (even in the remarkable having-it-all out with Roderick conversation at the end of the novel), but remaining an outsider to events in the usual Henry James manner and never coming fully to life. The problems with characterisation suffer perhaps from James's attempt to make his characters conform to types so that he can examine the respective qualities of American and European ideals. The question considered is whether the greater breadth of history, art and culture necessarily broadens the mind and enriches its New World visitors, or whether they would not be better cultivating their own beauties, personified in the figure of Miss Garland - not as immediately glamorous and captivating, but with distinct qualities of their own. James would rather seem to think so, but doesn't pretend that the thrall of Europe isn't persuasive also. It's this question, perhaps more than the romantic situations which have a tendency towards melodrama that arises here as it does in the subsequent The American, that make Roderick Hudson still a fine and enjoyable early work from the master.

Early James, Italy and the American
Henry James brings Americans to Italy - and the Americans act American. There are a few stumbles in this book that don't detract from the story nor from Jame's voice. The semi-sophisticated American brings a hopeful artist, also American, to beautiful Italy, where the artist, instead of acting like a European artist, acts like a spoiled child.

Roderick displays all that Europeans hate and love about Americans. And he gets away with it. It is only when his Mother and fiance arrive that the story turns from a soap opera into a tragedy.

I happen to love Jame's later works and found this story exhibiting all the promise of his later books.

The most readable thing James has written
I've always admired Henry James' vision. His exploration of character's desires, intriguing premises, and occasionally brilliant imagery all would certainly give him the title of "the Master". It's just too bad these strengths in most of his work are buried under unbelievably dense prose. Finishing one of James' novels is like emerging from an expedition into a deep cave. You certainly feel the same sense of accomplishment and fatigue.

That said, James' debut novel, Roderick Hudson, is a relatively quick read, filled with the interesting characters and settings, but without the convoluted writing style. It is the story of a young artist who is taken to Italy by an admiring patron, to become a great sculptor. Along the way, the artist struggles with his genius, and becomes distracted by...what else? A woman.

I felt for Rowland Mallet, the philanthropist who supports the man-child Roderick in his work. He has the patience of a saint, and is impeccably polite, almost to the point of annoyance. He is the reader's eyes and ears, through which the we perceive the other characters in the story.

Roderick Hudson himself is not likeable beyond a vague sympathy from the reader. He is given the opportunity most aspiring artists dream of: a patient, supportive patron, an exotic locale in which to work, the praise of his peers. He ends up squandering all of this over the most enigmatic of flirts, Miss Christina Light.

Throughout my reading of this novel, I wished one of the characters had the nerve to shed their 19th century sensibilities and put the coquettish Miss Light in her place. Rowland comes the closest, but he never musters the courage to mutter anything beyond a grudging, (and unrealistic) admiration for her. He watches the already engaged Roderick fall for her and does nothing until it is too late. None of the characters have much of a backbone.

This novel almost begs for a genuine villain to be a foil to the dull main characters and their encounters. Every other chapter involves Roderick, Rowland, and Christina somehow always running into each other, be it a roman coliseum, a catholic church, or a Swiss monastery. This doesn't seem to faze any of them, and they go on with their conversations with barely a, "fancy seeing YOU here" to be found.

Henry James has enough brilliance in his work to be worthy of study, but for those who read for entertainment (and that's what novels are supposed to be) Roderick Hudson is about the most accessible thing James has ever done. It's too bad the story itself isn't one of his better ones. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1895 in the collection Terminations ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Altar of the Dead
The Altar of the Dead, by Henry James, about a man bsessed with worshipping his dead, is overall a good book. There are some confusing points in the book, mostly due to the fact that it was written in the early 1900's. The subject is very interesting though, and I really liked the ending. I give it 3 stars!! ... Read more

Product Description
The tale of Daisy's irruption into staid European society enjoyed, as did Daisy herself, a succès de scandale; and it has remained one of Jamess most popular short stories. Like the others collected here--'Pandora,' 'The Patagonia,' and 'Four Meetings'-- it describes a confrontation between different values in a changing world. Is the new independent American girl enchanting in her spontaneity, alarming in her unpredictability, or merely vulnerable in her ignorance of social codes? Hung about with make admirers who seek, uncertainly, to grasp the new phenomenon, Daisy marches on undiscourageable, to her triumphant--or tragic--destiny.

This volume contains prefaces by Henry James, a chronology of his life, and editor's notes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Modern Surveillance Cameras ...
... have nothing over Henry James! Whatever his many biographers discover about his mundane corporeal existence, James's novels reveal him best, as an inveterate observer - his own words! - a chronic emotional voyeur, always in and never of society, a one-way looking glass. It made him the great writer he was, though one wouldn't want to BE him. "Well," as God said to Satan, "keeping watch on humans is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it."

The four long stories in this Oxford Clssic edition were not originally published together. "Daisy Miller" appeared in 1878, "Pandora" in 1884, "Patagonia" in 1888. The fourth piece, "Four Meetings", was one of James's first, written before 1877. They are a natural assembly, nevertheless, effectively versions of the same story.

DAISY MILLER
"They're very ignorant -- very innocent only, and utterly uncivilized. Depend on it they're not 'bad.'"
"They're hopelessly vulgar," said Mrs. Costello. "Whether being hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a questions for the metaphysicians. They're bad enough to blush for, at any rate; and for this short life that's quite enough."

Winterbourne, the first speaker above, is an American of twenty-seven who has lived most of his life in Europe, specifically in Geneva, where he is either a career student or simply an ornamental male presence, depending on the reporter. If 'earning a living' is of any concern to him, it plays no part in his demeanor in this narrative. Mrs. Costello is his wealthy aunt (a dowager?), who 'commands' his proper familial attentions at various resorts and in Rome several weeks a year. She is the very voice of propriety and discretion -- a snooty old biddy, if you will -- while he is a dilettante, a poseur, a prig, a veritable Henry James in short. "They" are the Millers - mother, daughter, and son - sent to inspect Europe and report back on its cultural progress by their filthy rich pater familias Cyrus Miller, of Schenectady, New York. Winterbourne first meets Daisy Miller while visiting his Aunt at Vevey, in Switzerland. He is entranced both by her beauty and by her bizarre ignorance of and/or indifference to the social codes of the Old World. Winterbourne and his Aunt are ludicrous snobs and ditherers; it's important to grasp that they are objects of satire as thoroughly as the Millers, the prototypical "ugly Americans" of touristic prominence all over Europe then and now. In fact, everyone in this novella comes in for a share of deliciously condescending satire, most pointedly James himself in the guise of Winterbourne. That's one of the redeeming qualities of Henry James, his ability to perceive and portray his own uselessness as a mere onlooker at life.

"Daisy Miller" is a gem, an 80-page masterpiece of snarky ambivalence. When I read it first, long ago in college, I probably took Winterbourne seriously; after all, the tale is told from his point of view. But taking himself or his fictional avatars seriously was a fault Henry James never committed. A longer exposure to James's self-observation, such as his later novels require, can challenge a reader's patience; there's only so much most of us want to care for such meticulous ambiguity. But "Daisy Miller" and "Pandora" are eminently enjoyable.

For a man and writer whose sexuality was so peculiarly repressed, James has made his irrepressible American girl Daisy Miller quite a luscious minx. Poor Winterbourne, stiff and epicene, can't keep his eyes off her. In the end, however, his fascination amounts merely to a kind of obsessive observation, and that's the core of the story, the voyeurism which underlies Henry James's literary genius. Nevertheless, Daisy is a brilliant 'study' of the American personality that Europeans have, then and now, found utterly appalling, naive and gauche ... and insidiously alluring.

PANDORA
Written six years after Daisy Miller, "Pandora" is a tongue-in-ear sequel, or perhaps a da capo aria. The characters have different names and play their roles with different outcomes, but James plainly intended the second story to complement the first. In fact, the earlier story is explicitly referenced as `a fiction to read to prepare for America.' "Pandora" begins on a ship crossing from Europe to New York. A young German diplomat, en route to a posting in Washington DC, assumes Winterbourne'James's role as "observer". There's a good deal of fun to be had with putting a precise Teutonic prig in James's skin, and James exploits all of it. The "Daisy" slot in the cast goes to "Pandora", less visually delectable perhaps but a good deal more personally functional. Pandora is on her way to becoming "the new woman," that is, the woman who conquers society merely by force of personality and physical charm, without the advantages of breeding. Our German observer is even less able to communicate his `interest' to Pandora than Winterborne was to Daisy; the most he can do is cogitate about the risk he runs, through his observation, of actually becoming susceptible. The reader will have no reason to fear for him in that manner.

PATAGONIA...
... is also a shipboard tale, with many of the same elements of social misconstruction as the two oolder stories. In it, however, the "observer" is also the first-person narrator, an older and more desexualized James, not so much fascinated by the "new woman" character as by his own obsession with observation. He's a gossip and a meddler, and comes to rue both roles. can we assert that Henry James modeled the famous Uncertainty Principle of physics in social intercourse? The end-game of every character in this and other Jamesian plots is disrupted by the impact of being observed.

Henry James straddled the world of 19th C class consciousness and 20th C class unconsciousness marvelously. Simultaneously the most conservative and the most prophetic of novelists, his women characters are easily the most persuasive and the most intriguing in all American literature. I have the feeling that James would not be at all surprised by the manners of social behavior in the USA in 2010. Daisy and Pandora were halfway here. Neither would he be any more comfortable in our `rec rooms' than he was in the drawing rooms of his own era. Really, I'm afraid he'd find us rather disappointing to observe. ... Read more

Product Description
The talented and beautiful Isabel Archer, courted by several suitors and enriched by her dying uncle, chooses to marry the cold and ambitious Gilbert Osmond. The heroine soon discovers to her cost that freedom of choice is never what it seems. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (64)

"Mill Of The Conventional"
When you pick up a book fully expecting the literary equivalent of beets or spinach, the result can be a self-fulfilling prophesy of mind-numbing boredom. Or you can be surprised by the interest and entertainment you get reading it. This provided more the latter than the former, if not to the point of real enthusiasm.

Isabel Archer is a young American woman living alone after her parents' deaths. A chilly but sympathetic aunt takes her to live with her estranged husband and their sickly son, Ralph Touchett. Ralph develops a special friendship for Isabel; he enjoys her spirit and wants to see her embrace life's possibilities. "You want to drain the cup of experience," he marvels. She demurs from this frank appraisal, but winds up quaffing down a particular noxious formula for lifelong misery. Can she see the error of her ways, and act accordingly?

Henry James is not my kind of writer. He likes long descriptive passages featuring much repetition and little plot. His focus seems narrowed to a privileged few.

Here those tendencies are leavened right away by the array of extraordinary characters we are introduced to. Other reviewers say "Portrait" is a good read once you get past the first 100 or so pages at Gardencourt, the Touchett estate. For me, the opening was the best part. We meet such characters as Mrs. Touchett, an openly selfish but duty-bound not-quite ex-wife; sickly but game Ralph; the radical nobleman Lord Warburton; a hilariously chauvinistic and dogged journalist, Henrietta Stackpole; and Isabel herself, who defies any simple characterization. Watching these people come together is a bit like a car wreck, though the most genteel car wreck imaginable.

The rest of the book is where things grew more tiresome to me. Isabel makes one of those life decisions only feasible in the realm of Victorian fiction, and the result is both predictable and drawn-out. James interestingly if frustratingly chooses to tell this part of the story in elliptical fashion; i.e. entire years fly by in the course of single paragraphs, and we are told of estrangements and miscarriages in almost second-hand fashion.

"The Portrait Of A Lady" derives the power it has from the notion of social order as iron-bound contract, of life "ground in the very mill of the conventional" as James writes. Some critics read a feminist message in this 1881 novel, of a woman struggling to break the bonds of male domination. But the bonds Isabel struggles with are of her own making, and she is surrounded by a raft of empowered females, one too many in fact.

"Portrait Of A Lady" has its fans, and I can see the attraction of this deep-dish novel. If you are a fan of the period, or of James in particular, you will probably enjoy it more than me. If you aren't a fan of those things, you could be pleasantly surprised all the same. YMMV, as they say.

Portrait of a Lady
The book is very wordy which tends to make it a slow read. Otherwise, I did enjoy the storyline.

A masterpiece on human psychology
Reading this novel is like receiving a punch in the stomach - yet from an exquisitely gloved fist. If you like character-driven stories with explosive endings, this novel is for you.

James is a genius in charting the complexities of the human psyche. His predilection for characterization and psychological analysis over plot development is what drives this novel. In fact, there is a lot of "action" - yet confined to the emotional landscape of characters.

James' literary style is very dense and requires a measured pace of reading. If this becomes frustrating (as it did to me occasionally), it's best to read it in spurts. The richness of the novel demands leisurely consumption, like an elaborate French meal, to be appreciated piece by piece.

Here is an example of typical sentence construction:

[QUOTE] Like his appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it was based partly on his eye for decorative character, his instinct for authenticity; but also on a sense for uncatalogued values, for that secret of a "luster" beyond any recorded losing or rediscovering, which his devotion to brittle wares had still not disqualified him to recognise. Mrs. Osmond, at present, might well have gratified such tastes. The years had touched her only to enrich her; the flower of her youth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on its stem. [END QUOTE]

Despite its density The Portrait of a Lady is more accessible than James' later novels - including The Ambassadors (Oxford World's Classics) - and is a good place to start with this classic author.

The main delight of the novel is in the characters - they are all exquisitely crafted and richly draped. They each have their own set of vocabulary, nuances, visual imagery and body language - from the sharp tongued Henrietta Stackpole to the obedient and docile Pansy Osmond. The novel also has great moments of humour, thanks to James' alter ego Ralph Touchett.

My only critique is the heavy handed analysis at times, which slows down the pace of the novel, as well as James peculiar aversion to paragraphing - the author will often cluster entire timelines, conversations and observations into a single paragraph which spans several pages without interlude.

Ultimately, however the novel is a masterpiece of human characterization that touches on themes of duty versus independence, social custom versus freedom. Despite the lack of plot - or "architecture" as the author calls it - James is an extraordinary storyteller and the ending packs quite a punch.

This novel is best enjoyed without prior knowledge of the plot - so skip the summary on the back and dive right in!

8/10

A NOTE ON EDITIONS: I really enjoyed the Wordsworth Classics edition. The introduction is not as long and heavily academic as the Penguin edition, and contributes to the enjoyment of the novel (read it AFTER the novel though). Also, the explanatory notes on the back are short and helpful, and don't interfere too much with the reading process (other editions publish long winded footnotes which are very taxing).

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Isabel Archer is a pretty, kind, intuitive, and quite intelligent young American lady, who through circumstance and fate is brought to London, then to Rome, and to a stifling marriage that proves to be her undoing. Before she meets the deviant Gilbert Osmond, she is followed by suitors, attended to by her sweet-natured and protective cousin Ralph Touchett (a literary character who everyone would want in their real lives) and assertive confidante Henrietta Stackpole. Once the surreptitious Madame Merle and Osmond get in the picture, however, niceties and childish feelings of peace and enlightenment are destroyed, and Henry James' talents come to the fore as he tells the absorbing story of social propriety ruining the passionate sense of self that our protagonist was heretofore driven by. Isabel's own passion deteriorates the further she gets within the decaying cities of Europe; the metaphor is skillfully told. This is a big messy entertaining phantasmagoria of a novel, daunting in its length as well as the depths of Archer's gradually crushing psyche that James guides you through with his acute artistry. Each character is razor sharp in their descriptions and motivations, the arc of the story is told gradually yet ever detail and rambling paragraph seems just right. This is classic, thought-provoking work, a bulwark of world literature, and must be read.

It's a good portrait
I read this, my first H. James novel, on the recommendation of a friend while I was commencing a trip to Rome.It was an excellent choice.I must say I was not entirely on board in the early stages of the book, set in England.Marraige proposals were happening too fast for my taste.Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised by the witty repartee, which reminded me much of Wilde.The wit diminishes and the intensity increases on the continent, especially in its Roman locale, and it was here that I found myself much more interested.The book has a soul.Its characters are richly painted and became interesting--I enjoyed them all.The novel also has a beautifully symmetric construction.In its early stages I thought James was trying too hard to perfect his European literary colleagues; by the end, the novel stood on its own.So, despite some minor growing pains, I can recommend and will likely read another by HJ. Peter Washington's introduction in the Everyman edition (James' New York version) is an added benefit. ... Read more