The Portrait of a Lady is one of James's most popular long novels, and is regarded by critics as one of his finest. The Portrait of a Lady is the story of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who in “affronting her destiny”, finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates. “The Wings of the Dove” tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honorable motives, while others are more self-interested. “The American” is an uneasy combination of social comedy and melodrama concerning the adventures and misadventures of Christopher Newman, an essentially good-hearted but rather gauche American businessman on his first tour of Europe.
Table of Contents:
Confidence
Roderick Hudson
The Ambassadors
The American
The Awkward Age The Bostonians
The Europeans
The Golden Bowl
The Other House
The Outcry
The Portrait of a Lady
The Princess Casamassima
The Reverberator
The Sacred Fount
The Spoils of Poynton
The Tragic Muse
The Whole Family
The Wings of the Dove
Washington Square
Watch and Ward
What Maisie Knew
The Ivory Tower (Unfinished)
The Sense of the Past (Unfinished)
Henry James (1843–1916) was an American-British writer who spent most of his writing career in Britain. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism.
