Search results for ""author henry james""

'Spring was already in the air, in the town; there was no rain but there was still less sun - one wondered what had become of it, on this side of the world - and the grey mildness, shading away into black at any pretext, appeared in itself a promise.' Henry James left America for England in 1876 and remained in his adopted country for the next three decades. Arriving in Liverpool, he made his way first to London, the 'dreadful, delightful city', which he would come to both love and hate. James revelled in the exoticism and immensity of all that was unknown to him and his writing spills over with youthful excitement, humour and vivid descriptions of the people, landscapes, towns and cities he encountered. In London, he marvelled at the architecture of Christopher Wren and the glamour of the Strand and observed with equal pleasure the seedier parts of the city, where gin shops glowed on the corners of dark alleys. He later set out to explore the English countryside: Chester, Warwick, Devon, Wells, Salisbury, Suffolk and Rye, where he eventually settled, bought Lamb House and wrote prolifically - producing some of his finest works, including What Maisie Knew, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl and The Middle Years. First published in 1905, English Hours is one of Henry James' most loved works of travel and a now-classic portrait of England by one of the great masters of 19th century literature.

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When the young American Frederick Winterbourne meets his compatriot Daisy Miller in the garden of a grand hotel in Switzerland, he is struck by her beauty, but slightly unsettled by her open ways and her flirtatiousness. Undeterred by this and by his aunt’s disapproval, he invites her to join him in a jaunt to a nearby castle, little suspecting that this will set in train a sequence of events that promises to be a source of heartache and disappointment for him, and threatens to compromise his own social acceptability. One of Henry James’s most enduringly popular works, Daisy Miller, here published in its 1909 version, incorporating the author’s final revisions, is a masterly, psychologically nuanced dissection of social mores and a merciless critique of convention and staid respectability.

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Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online.Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content.The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary.Washington Square, a Level 4 Reader, is A2+ in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to three clauses, introducing more complex uses of present perfect simple, passives, phrasal verbs and simple relative clauses. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear regularly.Catherine Sloper is not pretty or clever, but she is rich. She lives in New York with her father, the respected doctor, Austin Sloper. One day, Catherine meets a charming man called Maurice Townsend, who wants to marry her. But does Maurice really love Catherine, or does he just want her money? Doctor Sloper is sure that he knows the answer.Visit the Penguin Readers websiteExclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.

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The Penguin English Library Edition of Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James"I'm a fearful, frightful flirt! Did you ever hear of a nice girl that was not?"This edition contains two of Henry James's most popular short works. Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? In Daisy Miller Henry James created his first great portrait of the enigmatic and dangerously independent American woman, a figure who would come to dominate his later masterpieces.Oscar Wilde called James's chilling The Turn of the Screw 'a most wonderful, lurid poisonous little tale'. It tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil within the houses, she soon becomes obsessed with the belief that malevolent forces are stalking the children in her care.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

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'Heart-swelling in its wholesomeness' - Gina Martin 'A reminder of the life-changing power of empathy' - Emma Gannon Why are you kind? Could you be kinder? The kindness we owe one another goes far beyond everyday gestures like taking out the neighbour's bins - although it's important not to downplay those small acts. Kindness can also mean much more. In this timely, insightful guide, Henry James Garrett lays out the case for developing a strong, courageous, moral kindness, one that will help you fight cruelty and make the world a more empathetic place. Building on his academic studies in metaethics and using his signature sweet animal cartoons, Henry explores the sources and the limitations of human empathy and the many ways, big and small, that we can work toward being our best and kindest selves. A world in which everyone was the fully-empathetic of version of themselves would be a very kind world indeed. And that's the world this book will move us toward.

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Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? When she strikes up an intimate friendship with an urbane young Italian, her flat refusal to observe the codes of respectable behaviour leave her perilously exposed. In Daisy Miller James created his first great portrait of the enigmatic and dangerously independent American woman, a figure who would come to dominate his later masterpieces.

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'an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence' Young Daisy Miller perplexes, amuses, and charms her stiff but susceptible fellow-American, Frederick Winterbourne. Is she innocent or corrupt? Has he lived too long in Europe to judge her properly? Amid the romantic scenery of Lake Geneva and Rome, their lively, precarious relationship develops to a climax in the Colosseum at midnight. The tale gave James his first popular success, yet some compatriots detected treachery in its portrayal of young American womanhood. James responded with 'An International Episode', which exposes a couple of English gentlemen to the charm and wit of American sisters in Newport, RI and then in London. Independently read, these short masterpieces probe the manners and morals of a newly emergent transatlantic world. Together they shed light on each other, demonstrating the range of James's own manners, from sharp satire and buoyant comedy to complex, perhaps even tragic, pathos. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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'She will do as I have bidden her.' Catherine Sloper is heiress to a fortune and the social eminence associated with Washington Square. She attracts the attention of a good-looking but penniless young man, Morris Townsend. His suit is encouraged by Catherine's romantically-minded aunt, Mrs Penniman, but her father, a clever physician, is convinced that his motives are merely mercenary. He will not consent to the marriage, regardless of the cost to his daughter. Out of this classic confrontation Henry James fashioned one of his most deftly searching shorter fictions. First published in 1880 but set some forty years earlier in a pre-Civil War New York, the novel reflects ironically on the restricted world in which its heroine is marooned, seating herself at its close 'for life, as it were'. In his introduction Adrian Poole reflects on the book's gestation and influences, the significance of place, and the insight with which the four prinicipal players are drawn. The edition includes an account of the real-life tale that sparked James's imaginative genius. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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'One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.' Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe. She rejects two eligible suitors in her fervent commitment to liberty and independence, declaring that she will never marry. Thanks to the generosity of her devoted cousin Ralph, she is free to make her own choice about her destiny. Yet in the intoxicating worlds of Paris, Florence, and Rome, her fond illusions of self-reliance are twisted by the machinations of her friends and apparent allies. What had seemed to be a vista of infinite promise steadily closes around her and becomes instead a 'house of suffocation'. Considered by many as one of the finest novels in the English language, this is Henry James's most poised achievement, written at the height of his fame in 1881. It is at once a dramatic Victorian tale of betrayal and a wholly modern psychological study of a woman caught in a web of relations she only comes to understand too late. This edition reproduces the revised New York Edition, with James's own Preface. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Dominoes is a full-colour, interactive readers series that offers students a fun reading experience while building their language skills. With integrated activities and on-page glossaries the new edition of the series makes reading motivating for learners. Each reader is carefully graded to ensure each student reads from the right level from the very beginning.

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Publicada en 1877, esta irónica nouvelle es un modelo del género. El mismo Henry James así lo indicaba en sus cuadernos: La concisión de Cuatro encuentros (.) eso es hacia lo que debo tender!. La historia de la señorita Spencer, cuyo sueño es viajar a Europa y lo consigue, y cómo se resuelve su regreso a Estados Unidos constituye una metáfora de muchas de las aspiraciones humanas. El retrato de la protagonista está subordinado a la perturbadora seducción que ejercen sobre el lector el carácter ilusorio de su obsesión y el posterior misterio de la renuncia.Sabido es que James utilizaba sus relatos como laboratorio para su producción novelesca, y aquí un sutil juego de claroscuros recorre la obra, haciéndonos pasar de la luminosidad inicial a la oscuridad final, que mucho nos recuerda los finales de dos grandes novelas del autor, Washigton Square y Retrato de una dama.

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La joven Gabrielle de Bergerac ha tenido la fortuna de nacer en una familia ilustre de la nobleza rural francesa previa a la Revolución. Pero también la desgracia de no contar con bienes propios, circunstancia que hará que cualquier indicio de curiosidad vital, de inquietud intelectual, quede ahogado ante la perspectiva de elegir entre dos opciones igualmente sombrías: o un matrimonio favorable o el claustro. Su carácter noble y su naturaleza indagadora quedarán al descubierto cuando en su cerrado círculo social aparece Coquelin, el preceptor de su sobrino, un hombre pobre pero capaz de demostrar que la audacia, el saber y la belleza son valores que nada tienen que ver con la clase social.Considerada la novela más romántica de James, con influencias tanto de Jane Austen como del propio Molière, Gabrielle de Bergerac es un auténtico prodigio de elegancia formal y encanto, con uno de los personajes femeninos más carismáticos, íntegros y exquisitos de la narrativa jamesiana.

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Volume 2 Takes us from A private Life of 1892 to James's last story, A Round of Visits, published in 1910. These are the magnificient works of James' maturity - The Death of the Lion, The Altar of the Dead, The Figyre in the Carpet, The Turn of the Screw, In the Cage, The Beast in the Jungle and many others - in which the deepening darkness of the author's own life casts a tragic but heroic shadow on the themes of his youth.

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Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online.Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content.The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary.The Wings of the Dove, a Level 5 Reader, is B1 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing present perfect continuous, past perfect, reported speech and second conditional. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear regularly.Kate and Densher are in love and want to get married. Densher is a poor journalist, and Kate's aunt tells her that she must marry someone rich. But Kate has a plan. She decides to deceive Milly, a sweet young heiress who is very ill. She wants Milly to marry Densher so he can get her money after she dies. Will Kate's plan succeed?Visit the Penguin Readers websiteExclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.

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Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online.Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content.The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary.Visit the Penguin Readers websiteExclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.A young woman accepts her first job as a governess and goes to Bly, a large country house in England. There she teaches a young brother and sister. But the governess soon starts to see ghosts and tries to protect the children from them.

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This Library of America volume brings together one of Henry James’s most unusual experiments and one of his most beloved masterpiecesWriting to his friend William Dean Howells, Henry James characterized his experimental novel, The Sacred Fount, as the only one of his novels to be told in the first person, as “a fine flight into the high fantastic.” While traveling to the country house of Newmarch for a weekend party, the nameless narrator becomes obsessed with the idea that a person may become younger or cleverer by tapping the “sacred fount” of another person. Convinced that Grace Brissenden has become younger by drawing upon her husband, Guy, the narrator seeks to discover the source of the newfound wit of Gilbert Long, previously “a fine piece of human furniture.” His perplexing and ambiguous quest, and the varying reactions it provokes from the other guests, calls into question the imaginative inquiry central to James’s art of the novel.James described the essential idea of The Wings of the Dove as “a young person conscious of a great capacity for life, but early stricken and doomed, condemned to die under short respite, while also enamoured of the world.” The heroine, a wealthy young American heiress, Milly Theale (inspired by James’s beloved cousin Minny Temple), is slowly drawn into a trap set for her by the English adventuress Kate Croy and her lover, the journalist Morton Densher. The unexpected outcome of their mercenary scheme provides the resolution to a tragic story of love and betrayal, innocence and experience that has long been acknowledged as one of James’s supreme achievements as a novelist. This volume prints the New York Edition text of The Wings of the Dove, and includes the illuminating preface James wrote for that edition.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

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Nearly thirty years in the making, The Library of America's eleven-volume edition of the complete fiction of Henry James now culminates with this authoritative volume collecting his final three finished works. Considered by James to be his most finely constructed novel, The Ambassadors (1903) recounts the attempts of a conscientious American to convince the son of a friend to return home from Paris-and in doing so plays the charm of the Old World against the provincialism of the New. In The Golden Bowl (1904), an American woman marries an Italian prince while her father unknowingly marries the prince's former mistress; James underscores both the fragility and strength of human ties and further develops what he once called the "complex fate, being an American." Originally written for the stage but never produced, James reworked The Outcry (1911) into a highly successful comic novel of social manners that also deals with the ethics of art collecting. Included as an appendix is "The Married Son," the chapter James contributed to The Whole Family (1908), a multi-author novel conceived by William Dean Howells and portraying a dysfunctional family whose struggles mirror the frustrated collaborative efforts of the book's twelve contributors.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

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A strange and delightful memento of one of the most lasting literary voices of all time, The Daily Henry James is a little book from a great mind. First published with James's approval in 1911 as the ultimate token of fandom a limited edition quote-of-the-day collection titled The Henry James Year Book this new edition is a gift across time, arriving as we mark the centenary of his death. Drawing on the Master's novels, essays, reviews, plays, criticism, and travelogues, The Daily Henry James offers a series of impressions (for if not of impressions, of what was James fond?) to carry us through the year. From the deepest longings of Isabel Archer to James's insights in The Art of Fiction, longer seasonal quotes introduce each month, while concise bits of wisdom and whimsy mark each day. To take but one example: Isabel, in a quote from The Portrait of a Lady for September 30, muses, "She gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to plunge into the healing waters of action." Featuring a new foreword by James biographer Michael Gorra as well as the original introductions by James and his good friend William Dean Howells, this long-forgotten perennial calendar will be an essential bibelot for James's most ardent devotees and newest converts alike, a treasure to be cherished daily, across all seasons, for years, for ages to come.

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Henry James's classic tale of romance in urban nineteenth-century America, Washington Square is edited with an introduction and notes by Martha Banta in Penguin Classics.When timid and plain Catherine Sloper is courted by the dashing and determined Morris Townsend, her father, convinced that the young man is nothing more than a fortune-hunter, delivers an ultimatum: break off her engagement, or be stripped of her inheritance. Torn between her desire to win her father's love and approval and her passion for the only man who has ever declared his love for her, Catherine faces an agonising dilemma, and becomes all too aware of the restrictions that others seek to place on her freedom. James's masterly novel deftly interweaves the public and private faces of nineteenth-century New York society; it is also a deeply moving study of innocence destroyed.This edition of Washington Square includes a chronology, suggested further reading, notes and an introduction discussing the novel's lasting influence and James's depiction of the quiet strength of his heroine.Henry James (1843-1916) son of a prominent theologian, and brother to the philosopher William James, was one of the most celebrated novelists of the fin-de-siècle. His novella 'Daisy Miller' (1878) established him as a literary figure on both sides of the Atlantic, and his other novels in Penguin Classics include Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Awkward Age (1899), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904).If you enjoyed Washington Square, you might like Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, also available in Penguin Classics.'Washington Square is a perfectly balanced novel... a work of surpassing refinement and interest'Elizabeth Hardwick'Perhaps the only novel in which a man has successfully invaded the feminine field and produced a work comparable to Jane Austen's'Graham Greene

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Mrs Gereth, widowed chatelaine of Poynton, is fighting to keep her house with its priceless objets d'art from her son Owen and his lovely, utterly philistine fiancée. When she discovers that her young friend and sympathizer Fleda Vetch is secretly in love with Owen, she thrusts her into the battle-line. The power struggle that ensues between the three women leaves Owen vacillating. What is at stake is not the mere possession of tables and chairs; it is, for Fleda, a conflict between aesthetic ideals, ethical imperatives, and her innermost feelings, in which she risks betraying, and being betrayed by, all that she holds most dear. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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This volume includes "Daisy Miller", "Pandora", "The Patagonia", and "Four Meetings". ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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one of a series of new editions of Henry James's most famous short stories and novels.

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