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Product Description
From Amazon
This volume in the Library of America's series on Henry James catches the author as he inaugurates his "middle period," the years when he wrote many of his best books. The three novels reprinted here concern women who must choose between competing alternatives. Catherine Sloper of Washington Square, plain and bookish, is romanced by the dashingly handsome Morris Townsend. But her father, sure that such a man could only love Catherine for her money, forbids her to see him. The young heroine of The Bostonians is torn between loyalty to her southern beau and her attraction to one of James's most unusual characters: a wealthy Boston feminist!
The Portrait of a Lady, arguably James's greatest novel, introduces us to Isabel Archer, a beautiful, vivacious, and independently minded American woman who travels to Europe and is seduced by its society. Her circle includes her terminally ill but deeply loving cousin, Ralph; the noble and adoring Lord Warburton; her witty and sarcastic friend Henrietta Stackpole; the meticulous aesthete Gilbert Osmond; the mysterious Madame Merle; and Caspar Goodwood, her passionate American suitor. Negotiating between the life each of them offers and represents, Isabel becomes part of one of the best books written about women's choices.
Movie buffs will be particularly interested in this volume, for all the novels in it have been made into films. The Bostonians was a Merchant-Ivory production in 1984. It starred Vanessa Redgrave as the feminist Olive Chancellor, sparring with southern gentleman Christopher Reeve! The Portrait of a Lady (1996), with Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich, was Jane Campion's opulent follow-up to The Piano. And Washington Square has been made into two major movies: the 1997 version starred Jennifer Jason- Leigh and Albert Finney; but the classic adaptation was William Wyler's 1949 film The Heiress, which starred Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins, and Olivia de Havilland in an Oscar-winning role. It's a real treat to read a superb book and then see how major filmmakers transform it into cinema that is compelling and entertaining it its own right. --Raphael Shargel
From the Publisher
The Library of America is an award-winning, nonprofit program dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as "the most important book publishing project in the nation's history" (Newsweek), this acclaimed series is restoring America's literary heritage in "the finest looking, longest-lasting edition ever made" (New Republic).
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Washinton Square" by Henry James,
By A Customer
This review is from: Henry James Novels 1881 To 1886 (Hardcover)
I enjoyed "Washington Square" thoroughly. I believe any highschool student should read this if they are looking for a "book" report. I found it captivating and I couldn't put the book down. However I was a little disappointed in how the ending turned out, but what can I do?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews) 8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not the way to go for "Portrait",
By J. Melancon - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Henry James Novels 1881 To 1886 (Hardcover)
The LOA editions of James are generally excellent and recommended, but their scholarly principle of choosing texts that represent James's first intentions presents a problem with "The Portrait of a Lady." As stated in the notes on the texts (p.1239), James "extensively revised" the novel for the New York Edition of 1908, "making this final version a very different book from the one that first appeared in 1881." It is the 1881 version that appears here, and it is inferior, if for no other reason than the abrupt ending (at the line "On which he looked up at her."). The 1908 edition adds just a few more lines -- brief, but breathtaking. If you're reading "The Portrait of a Lady" for the first time, definitely go for the revised version.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good entree into James,
By charles saydah - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Henry James Novels 1881 To 1886 (Hardcover)
You want a way to get into a formidable writer, one whose collective work fills up a goodly portion of the Library of America bookshelf -- here's your passport. The three novels in this LOA volume are James' earliest and in some ways his most accessible. The chronological biography in the back is very helpful, as are the notes. The presentation is typical Library of America -- crisp 10-point Linotron Galliard against the characteristic LOA white paper makes for easy reading. At roughly 400 words per page, movement through the work seems swift, a considerable boost to tackling a 600-page novel novel like "Portrait of a Lady."James requires a developed taste. He writes of a time and about places and people who may seem remote to contemporary readers. Don't be put off by a failure to penetrate him. This is handsome and ultimately useful volume to have of your shelf in the event that someday you'll try James once again and discover that those people, those places and that time are closer than you thought. 6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The joys of love. . . . are but a moment long,
By Allen J. Horne "Poet and scholar" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Henry James Novels 1881 To 1886 (Hardcover)
Henry James, packaged in a beautiful book, with dark print on white pages, is the king of the nuance. To read him, you slow down, you enter his world, a scene of dusk and mood and marrow and sorrow. A novel as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble tub, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land. Characters who sometimes do not get exactly what they want even though they want it. One far removed from current events and politics and global warming and death-defying high wire acts of short-sighted greed which are all net and no tightrope. Far removed and yet existing at the core where the personal is burnt into the societal and where a man sitting on an ottoman while a woman stands next to a fireplace predicts the ruin of the state.
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