Henry James 
The Golden Bowl (Annotated) 

• This edition includes the following editor’s analysis: Henry James, the master of realism captured in ‘The Golden Bowl’

“The Golden Bowl” is a 1904 novel by American-British author Henry James.

One of the first novels considered to belong in the modernist literary genre, but also the last great realist work, “The Golden Bowl” penetrates deeply into the psyches of its main characters, often detailing their innermost thoughts almost to the point of absurdity.

The novel is a complex, intense study of marriage and adultery that completes the most relevant phase of James’s career.

James borrowed the book’s title from a verse in Ecclesiastes 12 that depicts a cracked golden bowl as a metaphor for the inevitable decay or destruction of all beautiful things.



Set in England, Henry James’ novel tells the story of the marriage of two couples and the impact the prior relationships of these couples have on each other. The story revolves around a beautiful, but cracked, golden bowl and the secrets this bowl allows to surface. Maggie, the heroine of the book, goes into full battle mode to keep her husband, but protect others from her knowledge of an adulterous affair. As the novel ends, all Maggie’s husband can see is…