What can destroy sisterly love faster than a love triangle? "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" tells the story of two sisters: Viola and Perdita, described as equally beautiful. Both women fall in love with Mr. Arthur Lloyd, who then must choose between them. The sisters vow not to be angry at his choice but after Lloyd chooses Perdita, Viola falls into jealousy and depression. Discover what is she ready to do to win the man of her heart in this story of dramatic rivalry. Henry James (1843 – 1916) is regarded one of the greatest novelists in the English language. Born in the United States, but mainly living and working in Europe, he was largely occupied with the clash of personalities and cultures between the Old World and the New World. He explored this topic in his famous novels 'The Portrait of a Lady' and 'The Wings of the Dove'. James was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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

Do the surfaces matter? In this provocative book, A Superficial Reading of Henry James: Preoccupations with the Material World, Thomas J. Otten demonstrates that surfaces matter profoundly. Taking seriously the accessories of Henry James's fiction-the china and bric-a-brac, the antique cabinets and tapestries, the ribbons and hats-this book argues that James's famous ambiguity is a material state, an indeterminate zone where the difference between essence and ornament disappears. Ranging between fictions as well-known as The Portrait of a Lady (whose heroine is celebrated for her psychological complexity) and ones as understudied as "Rose-Agathe" (whose heroine is a hairdresser's manikin), Otten suggests that the distinction between what counts as thematic depth and what counts as physical surface is, for James, impossible to maintain. Achieving a superficial reading of Henry James means demonstrating the persistence of the material within the novelist's most conceptual formations of meaning-an argument with important consequences for literary theory, as Otten shows in his concluding chapters. Eloquently written and guided by a perverse love for the superfluous detail, this book makes an important contribution to a fast-growing area of the humanities, one newly committed to the serious study of material culture, the concrete experiences of everyday life, and the history of the physical senses. Book jacket.

The American A social comedy about Christopher Newman, an American businessman on his first tour of Europe. Along the way, he finds a widow from an aristocratic French family.

To commemorate the recent centennial of Henry James’s death and to help readers understand the depth and scope of the author’s influence both today and during the previous century, thirty leading Jamesian scholars from twelve different countries and five continents were asked to explore ways in which the notions of ‘heritage’ and ‘transmission’ currently come into play when reading James. The resulting chapters of this volume are divided into three main sections, each focusing on different ways in which James’s legacy is being re-evaluated today—from his influence on key authors, playwrights and film-makers over the past century (Part One), to new discoveries regarding European authors and artists who influenced James (Part Two), to recent approaches more radically re-evaluating James for the twenty-first century, including contemporary poetics, political and sociological dimensions, cognitive science, and queer studies (Part Three). This collection will be of great interest to scholars and general readers of James, and is a useful guide to tracing the writer’s ever-elusive ‘figure in the carpet’ and understanding the power of his continued impact today.

Publisher description

The delightful memoir by James's feisty and feminist secretary, with a biographical essay and excerpts from her diaries

The New York Timescompared Sheldon M. Novick'sHenry James: The Young Masterto "a movie of James's life, as it unfolds, moment to moment, lending the book a powerful immediacy." Now, inHenry James: The Mature Master, Novick completes his super, revelatory two-volume account of one of the world's most gifted and least understood authors, and of a vanished world of aristocrats and commoners. Using hundreds of letters only recently made available and taking a fresh look at primary materials, Novick reveals a man utterly unlike the passive, repressed, and privileged observer painted by other biographers. Henry James is seen anew, as a passionate and engaged man of his times, driven to achieve greatness and fame, drawn to the company of other men, able to write with sensitivity about women as he shared their experiences of love and family responsibility. James, age thirty-eight as the volume begins, basking in the success of his first major novel,The Portrait of a Lady, is a literary lion in danger of being submerged by celebrity. As his finances ebb and flow he turns to the more lucrative world of the stage-with far more success than he has generally been credited with. Ironically, while struggling to excel in the theatre, James writes such prose masterpieces asThe Wings of the DoveandThe Golden Bowl. Through an astonishingly prolific life, James still finds time for profound friendships and intense rivalries.Henry James: The Mature Masterfeatures vivid new portraits of James's famous peers, including Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde, and Robert Louis Stevenson; his close and loving siblings Alice and William; and the many compelling young men, among them Hugh Walpole and Howard Sturgis, with whom James exchanges professions of love and among whom he thrives. We see a master converting the materials of an active life into great art. Here, too, as one century ends and another begins, is James's participation in the public events of his native America and adopted England. As the still-feudal European world is shaken by democracy and as America sees itself endangered by a wave of Jewish and Italian immigrants, a troubled James wrestles with his own racial prejudices and his desire for justice. With the coming of world war all other considerations are set aside, and James enlists in the cause of civilization, leaving his greatest final works unwritten. Hailed as a genius and a warm and charitable man-and derided by enemies as false, effeminate, and self-infatuated-Henry James emerges here as a major and complex figure, a determined and ambitious artist who was planning a new novel even on his deathbed. InHenry James: The Mature Master, he is at last seen in full; along with its predecessor volume, this book is bound to become t