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Reprint. Hard cover, 8vo, in blue cloth illustrated by book artist Coralie Bickford-Smith with wide eyed design and tiles in pale blue, light blue endpapers, xl, 339 pp. sixth printing. CONDITION: Fine, like new. The extensive additional materials include a chronology biography of the Author, interpretive introduction by editor Susie Boyt, novelist playwright and director of Britain's Hampstead Theatre. Bibliographical suggestions for further study of James are also included, and each short story also has notes. The volume contains eight short ghostly stories, including the title story, 1898's "The Turn of the Screw," first serialized in Collier's Magazine and released in book form the same year. This psychological haunted house drama pits an English governess against spiritual dangers, at the peril of her young charges in this tale which has inspired numerous retellings in film and television. * The well-regarded "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, " written in 1867, is set in eighteenth-century Massachusetts, and influenced by the author's admiration of the works of Hawthorne, Poe and Irving. Two eighteenth-century sisters find themselves in an unexpected and damaging romantic rivalry with a gentleman acquaintance who has recently returned to from study abroad. Perdita and Rosalind vie for an engagement, introducing new stresses to their relationship. When the first marriage occurs, the remaining sibling must depart the field, only to have her matrimonial chances revived upon the death of wife number one. Greed for the physical possession of the bridal trousseau brings an unexpected, spiritual, rebuff.*1874's "The Last of the Valerii," a masterpiece of Gothic horror set in Rome, features a young bride who marries an Italian Count, and overlooks intimations of his odd behaviors in favor of the chance to be mistress of the rather crumbling palazzo. A visiting friend reveals disturbing facets of the Count's character, with the marriage becoming endangered by unexpected hauntings. Other tales include "Sir Edmund Orme," "Owen Wingrave," "The Friends of the Friends, "The Third Person" was included in 1900's story collection, "The Soft Side," and concerns a comic romantic rivalry between two aging spinsters and a ghostly presence they encounter in an inherited house on the South English coast. In "The Jolly Corner" (1908) a middle age man, Spencer Brydon, returns to his ancestral home in New York after a lengthy period of living abroad and becoming psychologically affected by intimations of the life which he might have had if he had remained. New York-born Author HENRY JAMES, (1843- 1916) while perhaps most famous for his Gilded Age tales set among New York and Boston society, emigrated to Britain in the mid-1870's, having previously studied and travelled abroad extensively. This collection of an American master of gothic, ghostly short stories, in an attractive, well-designed and durable format, is surely a collectible addition to your library.
Ref: FICT19 9340
$35.00