JAMES HENRY

(P/B) Daisy Miller
When the young American Frederick Winterbourne meets his compatriot Daisy Miller in the garden of a grand hotel in Switzerland, he is struck by her beauty, but slightly unsettled by her open ways and her flirtatiousness. Undeterred by this and by his aunt's disapproval, he invites her to join him in a jaunt to a nearby castle, little suspecting that this will set in train a sequence of events that promises to be a source of heartache and disappointment for him, and threatens to compromise his own social acceptability. One of Henry James's ...
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Ο ΒΩΜΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΝΕΚΡΩΝ
Ο Τζορτζ Στράνσομ τιμά τακτικά τη μνήμη των νεκρών του και μετατρέπει το παρεκκλήσι του ναού που επισκέπτεται σε «ένα βουνό από φως». Εκεί ξεχωρίζει μια γυναίκα για την οποία διαισθάνεται πως τους ενώνει μια κοινή πίστη. Ο ισχυρός πνευματικός δεσμός που καλλιεργούν δεν ξεφεύγει ποτέ από το ήθος του υψηλού σκοπού τους. Ωστόσο οι κοινές τελετουργίες τους διαταράσσονται απρόσμενα όταν ο Στράνσομ ανακαλύπτει κάτι από το παρελθόν της. (ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑΣΗ ΣΤΟ ΟΠΙΣΘΟΦΥΛΛΟ ΤΟΥ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΥ)...
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ΠΡΙΓΚΙΠΙΣΣΑ ΚΑΖΑΜΑΣΙΜΑ
Σε μια φτωχογειτονιά του Λονδίνου ο Υάκινθος μεγαλώνει με όνειρα ταπεινά και τις μικρές φιλοδοξίες των ανθρώπων του μόχθου. Είναι μπλεγμένος σε μια μυστική λαϊκή επαναστατική οργάνωση που στόχος της είναι η ανατροπή της άρχουσας τάξης. Σε κάποια παρορμητική στιγμή, ο Υάκινθος θα δώσει όρκο τιμής να εκτελέσει ένα πολιτικό πρόσωπο που θεωρείται από την οργάνωση εχθρός του λαού. Την ίδια εποχή θα γνωρίσει μια γυναίκα πανέμορφη, μοιραία: την πριγκίπισσα Καζαμάσιμα, πλάσμα εγωκεντρικό κι ανικανοποίητο, που θα γοητευθεί από τη λαϊκή απλότητά του...
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(P/B) THE GOLDEN BOWL
A rich American art-collector and his daughter Maggie buy in for themselves and to their greater glory a beautiful young wife and a noble husband. They do not know that Charlotte and Prince Amerigo were formerly lovers, nor that on the eve of the Prince's marriage they had discovered, in a Bloomsbury antique shop, a golden bowl with a secret flaw. When the golden bowl is broken, Maggie must leave the security of her childhood and try to reassemble the pieces of her shattered happiness. In this, the last of his three great poetic masterpie...
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THE TURN OF THE SCREW (+MULTI-LINGUAL GLOSSARY)
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(P/B) WHAT MAISIE KNEW
After her parents' bitter divorce, young Maisie finds herself shuttled between her selfish mother, Ida, and her vain father, Beale Farange, who value her only as a means for provoking each other. When both take lovers and remarry, Maisie - solitary, observant and wise beyond her years - is drawn into an entangled adult world of intrigue and sexual betrayal, until she is at last able to cooperate in choosing her own future. (from the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE AMBASSADORS
Lambert Strether, a mild middle-aged American of no particular achievements, is dispatched to Paris from the manufacturing empire of Woollett, Massachusetts. The mission conferred on him by his august patron, Mrs Newsome, is to discover what, or who, is keeping her son Chad in the notorious city of pleasure, and to bring him home. But Strether finds Chad transformed by the influence of a remarkable woman; and as the Parisian spring advances, he himself succumbs to the allure of the 'vast bright Babylon' and to the mysterious charm of Madam...
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Η ΔΕΥΤΕΡΗ ΕΥΚΑΙΡΙΑ
Οι "Μέσοι Χρόνοι" δημοσιεύτηκαν για πρώτη φορά στο περιοδικό Scribner's Magazine, τον Μάιο του 1893. Ήταν μια χρονιά σημαδιακή για τον Τζέιμς: είχε κλείσει τα 50 μόλις έναν χρόνο πριν, είχε πεθάνει η αγαπημένη αδελφή του Άλις (η μικρότερη, και το μοναδικό κορίτσι της οικογένειας) κι ενώ ως τότε ζούσε αποκλειστικά από το γράψιμό του, λάμβανε τώρα ένα μικρό εισόδημα από την οικογενειακή περιουσία. Αλλά και κάτι ακόμα: ήταν πλέον ένας αποφασισμένος εργένης που είχε αποδεχτεί, όσο ποτέ πριν, το αίσθημα της μοναξιάς - όπως είπε σε έναν φίλο, ...
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ΤΟ ΣΤΡΙΨΙΜΟ ΤΗΣ ΒΙΔΑΣ
Μια νεαρή γκουβερνάντα αναλαμβάνει την ανατροφή δύο παιδιών, του Μάιλς και της Φλώρας, μετά τον θάνατο των γονιών τους. Εγκαθίσταται σε έναν πύργο στην εξοχή όπου θα συνειδητοποιήσει ότι δεν είναι μόνη με τα παιδιά. Τα φαντάσματα της προηγούμενης γκουβερνάντας και του παιδαγωγού στοιχειώνουν με την παρουσία τους το παλιό αρχοντικό. Θα καταφέρει η νεαρή κοπέλα να προστατέψει τα παιδιά και να κρατήσει μακριά τα ζοφερά όντα ενός άλλου κόσμου; Ή μήπως είναι μάταιη κάθε αντίσταση σε μια πραγματικότητα που δημιούργησε η πιο νοσηρή φαντασία; Το σ...
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(P/B) WASHINGTON SQUARE
When timid and plain Catherine Sloper acquires a dashing and determined suitor, her father, convinced that the young man is nothing more than a fortune-hunter, decides to put a stop to their romance. Torn between her desire to win her father’s love and approval and her passion for the first man who has ever declared his love for her, Catherine faces an agonising dilemma, and becomes all too aware of the restrictions that others seek to place on her freedom. James’s masterly novel deftly interweaves the public and private faces of nineteent...
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(P/B) WASHINGTON SQUARE
Introduction and Notes by Ian F.A. Bell, Professor of English Literature, University of Keele. Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 1870's, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 1840s, similarly a period of considerable turbulence as the Un...
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(P/B) THE AMBASSADORS
The greatest expression of his talent for witty, observant explorations of what it means to 'live well', Henry James' "The Ambassadors" is edited with an introduction and notes by Adrian Poole in "Penguin Classics". Concerned that her son Chad may have become involved with a woman of dubious reputation, the formidable Mrs Newsome sends her 'ambassador' Strether from Massachusetts to Paris to extricate him. Strether's mission, however, is gradually undermined as he falls under the spell of the city and finds Chad refined rather than corrupt...
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(P/B) THE EUROPEANS
Featuring a new introduction by Andrew Taylor, it is a brilliant and sophisticated satire of manners and morals in the best Jamesian tradition. The Europeans, one of James' most popular and optimistic novels, has at its center an expatriated American raised in Europe who, determined to find a new husband, flees from her crumbling marriage and travels to Boston with her younger brother. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE TURN OF THE SCREW
A young governess is employed to look after two enchantingly beautiful orphans. Striving to protect the children, she becomes obsessed with the idea that they are in danger, and her good intentions cause more harm than good. Uneasy and sinister, this novella shows a woman haunted by an eerie and evil presence that emerges from the terrors of real life. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA
Henry James conceived the character of Hyacinth Robinson-his 'little presumptuous adventurer with his combination of intrinsic fineness and fortuitous adversity'-while walking the streets of London. Brought up in poverty, Hyacinth has nevertheless developed aesthetic tastes that heighten his awareness of the sordid misery around him. He is drawn into the secret world of revolutionary politics and, in a moment of fervour, makes a vow that he will assassinate a major political figure. Soon after this he meets the beautiful Princess Casamassi...
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(P/B) DAISY MILLER AND OTHER STORIES
Daisy Miller is one of Henry James's most attractive heroines: she represents youth and frivolity. As a tourist in Italy, her American freedom and freshness of spirit come up against the corruption and hypocrisy of European manners. From its first publication, readers on both sides of the Atlantic have quarrelled about her, defending or attacking the liberties that Daisy takes and the conventions that she ignores. All three tales in this collection, Daisy Miller, An International Episode and Lady Barbarina, express James's most notable sub...
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(P/B) THE BOSTONIANS
The plot of this novel revolves around the feminist movement in Boston in the 1870s. F.R. Leavis called it one of "the two most brilliant novels in the language." The novel's many allusions to the historical and social background of Boston society are explained in the editorial material. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE BOSTONIANS
Published in 1886, The Bostonians begins with the arrival in Boston of Basil Ransom, a young Mississippi lawyer in search of a career. Through his cousin, Olive Chancellor, Ransom comes to meet Verena, the beautiful daughter of a charlatan faith-healer and showman. When they hear Verena talk, Olive hopes to win the girl over to the feminist cause, Ransom is attracted to her looks, and a battle for possession of the girl begins. With its discussion of the situation of women and its uncompromising depiction of the city and the media, THE BOS...
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(P/B) ITALIAN HOURS
'The charm of certain vacant grassy spaces, in Italy, overfrowned by masses of brickwork that are honeycombed by the suns of centuries, is something that I hereby renounce once for all the attempt to express; but you may be sure that whenever I mention such a spot enchantment lurks in it.' - Henry James In these essays on travels in Italy written from 1872 to 1909, Henry James explores art and religion, political shifts and cultural revolutions, and the nature of travel itself. James's enthusiastic appreciation of the unparalleled aestheti...
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(P/B) HENRY JAMES: SELECTED TALES
Throughout his life, Henry James was drawn to the short story form for the freedom and variety it offered. The nineteen stories in this selection span James's career, from brief tales to longer works, all exploring his concerns with the old world and the new, money, fame and art. 'Daisy Miller', the work that first brought him fame, depicts a bold, unsophisticated American girl abroad, and 'In the Cage' portrays a young telegraphist's romantic fantasies about customers who send telegrams from her post office. In 'The Birthplace' a Stratfor...
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