Henry James

Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors

The master of psychological fiction. His great subject was the encounter between American innocence and European complexity, rendered in prose of extraordinary syntactic refinement. The late novels — The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl — push the novel of consciousness to its limit.

Key works

• The Portrait of a Lady1881— An American woman's encounter with Europe
• The Ambassadors1903— A man's belated awakening to life
• The Turn of the Screw1898— The most ambiguous ghost story ever written

Connections

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