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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.4
EAN: 9780940450301
ISBN: 0940450305
Label: Library of America
Manufacturer: Library of America
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 1249
Publication Date: 1985-12-01
Publisher: Library of America
Studio: Library of America

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

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The joys of love. . . . are but a moment long
Review: 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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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "Washinton Square" by Henry James
Review: 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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