From Amazon.co.uk
Henry James's 1898 novella
In the Cage (written in the same year as the more well-known
The Turn of the Screw) is a sly, slight, vaguely sentimental work but one that acts as a fine introduction to this most convoluted of writers. Exact ("exacting" yet with a pointillist's precision) is the word most often used to describe James's prose but very often the modern reader will find his hesitant, pedantic, clause-heavy sentences difficult to follow, overlong and tortuously complex. But the key to reading and enjoying James is in succumbing to those very sentences, allowing his perfect ear and fine metre to establish its own rhythm, letting it guide one's response to his beautiful, matchless use of language.
In the Cage tells the story of a young women, the "betrothed of Mr Mudge", who works at a post-office counter sending telegrams mostly from the "idle rich" to their fellows to arrange their meetings, parties and other affairs. Concerned, as ever, with the plight of the not so well-to-do--and particularly the role and circumstances of women--James finely delineates our heroine's increasing preoccupation with Captain Everard for whom she sends a considerable number of messages and about whom she has increasingly warm thoughts: "people of her sort... didn't count as infidelity, counted only as something else: she might have been curious, since it came to that, to see exactly as what".
Caught between the modern (this is a tale of communications as well as of communication) and the Victorian (this is a tale of manners and repression; class and its debilitating strictures) In the Cage may well be James-lite but it is not any the less charming, compelling, wry and intelligent for that; and this ultimately very amusing book is a wonderful gift for the right kind of reader. --Mark Thwaite
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Publisher
Hesperus Press, as suggested by their Latin motto,
Et remotissima prope, is dedicated to bringing near what is far—far both in space and time. Works by illustrious authors, often unjustly neglected or simply little known in the English–speaking world, are made accessible through a completely fresh editorial approach or new translations. Through these short classic works, which feature forewords by leading contemporary authors, the modern reader will be introduced to the greatest writers of Europe and America. An elegantly designed series of exceptional books.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
