There is no better novel that gets the reader right into the
complexity of being human and the convolution of life itself
than Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. The protagonist’s
complexity is noticeable from the beginning while the story
itself is not just captivating but piously ingraining in its own
right. Its vastness of cultural allusions, the shrewdness of its
initiating construction and cleverness of assembly is a hallmark
of master storytelling. Isabel is free-spirited and concerned
about her freedom and driven by the fear of losing it. She is
in Europe courtesy of aunt Touchett and her path to marriage
is almost guaranteed. However, the inebriating Continent
proves to be an intoxicated realm from Paris, Florence to
Rome where her doting self-sufficiency misapprehensions
come into question while ostensible associates and superficial
friends craft a web of intrigues that will forever change her.
Table of Content
About the Editor
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Introduction
Biographical Note
Criticisms and Interpretation
I. BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
II. FROM THE NATION
III. BY WILLIAM CRARY BROWNELL
LIST OF CHARACTERS
Preface to the New York Edition (1908) by HENRY JAMES
Volume I
Volume II
About the author
HENRY JAMES was an American author, who became a naturalized British citizen in 1915. He was born in New York in 1843. The billions of English-speaking people who are familiar with his writings consider him to be the genius of his age, but his fame and influence spread beyond the New World and the Old. Always fascinated by the Old World, and the differences between his home country and Europe, he settled in London in 1869 and established relationships with Macmillian and other publishers. Henry James spent almost three decades of his life in Europe and many of his novels are set there, mostly in England and Italy. In 1875, he moved to Paris for a year, where he met Zola, Maupassant, Turgenev, Alphonse Daudet and many other key figures in France.While living in London, James continued to follow the careers of the ‘French realists’, Zola in particular, but he was also influenced by George Eliot and Ivan Turgenev. He studied the French writers and became friends with Robert Louis Stevenson, John Singer Sargent, Edmund Gosse and many others who were influenced like him by the French naturalist writers. James pioneered the transition between literary realism and literary modernism in Western literature, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912 and 1916. His novels have been translated into more than twenty languages and he is considered to be a major figure in English literature. His many works include The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. He died in 1916.
More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
259,629 Ebooks in this category
