“Sir Edmund Orme” is one of Henry James’s many tales that revolve around strange apparitions. A fascination with occult (magical, theosophical, mysterious, or even spiritual) phenomena is evident in many of James’s tales and short stories. Like his contemporaries George… Read More ›
“The Real Thing” was published in 1892 in Black and White and is considered among Henry James’s finest short stories. The tale explores the complicated interplay of life and art, of object and imagination. The unnamed narrator is an illustrator… Read More ›
“In the Cage,” a realist novella, was first published during what is known as Henry James’s ‘middle period.’ In this phase of his writing, James focused on political and social themes rather than on his more typical explorations of the… Read More ›
Originally subtitled “A Study,” this novella was first published by Leslie Stephen, the father of Virginia Woolf, in the Cornhill Magazine. The choice of a British press cost Henry James his American rights. The sheer amount of pirated versions, however,… Read More ›
One of the most enduringly popular of Henry James’s shorter fictions, The Aspern Papers was first published in serial form in the American journal Atlantic from March to May 1888. Its central theme concerns the attempt by the story’s anonymous… Read More ›
First published in Henry James’s 1902 collection, The Better Sort, “The Beast in the Jungle” is among the most anthologized of his short stories. Often read as a fable about failure, the tale of John Marcher is also seen as… Read More ›
“The Turn of the Screw” was first published as a serial in Collier’s Weekly in 1898 and appeared later the same year in book form, in The Two Magics. Quickly becoming Henry James’s most popular piece of short fiction, The… Read More ›
“Europe,” originally published in the story collection The Soft Side, is a useful encapsulation in short story form of the symbolic use of Europe that Henry James had employed so successfully in the novella Daisy Miller and later in a… Read More ›
First published in the English Review, this story, frequently interpreted in conjunction with “The Beast in the Jungle” and The Turn of the Screw, begins in medias res. Spencer Brydon, age 56, who has just returned to New York from… Read More ›
Written in 1892, Henry James‘s short story “Greville Fane” depicts the troubled and tumultuous relationship between a popular novelist, Greville Fane, and her two ungrateful children, Lady Ethel Luard and Leolin. The short story begins with the narrator’s receiving news… Read More ›
One of Henry James’s most anthologized stories, The Real Thing was first published on April 16, 1892, in Black and White and later reprinted in the New York edition of James’s works (1909), a comprehensive, multivolume collection of James’s works…. Read More ›
Henry James (15 April 1843 –28 February 1916) believed that an author must be granted his donnée, or central idea, and then be judged on the execution of his material. James’s stories are about members of high society. The characters… Read More ›
Longman, Green, and Company published Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1886 as a “shilling shocker.” Stevenson reputedly developed the storyline from a dream he had about a man forced into a cabinet… Read More ›
Xingu is a satirical short story about a “Lunch Club” of several women, who are “indomitable huntresses of erudition” (203). They have invited the “celebrated” novelist Osric Dane to their next meeting, and in chapter 1 they prepare for the… Read More ›
In 1921 Virginia Woolf published her first collection of short stories, titled Monday or Tuesday, which included “A Haunted House” as the opening piece. Although she continued to publish short fiction, this proved to be the only collection of such… Read More ›
A term coined by British feminist Sarah Grand in an 1894 essay to describe an independent woman who seeks achievement and self-fulfilment beyond the realm of marriage and family. According to Grand, the New Woman “proclaimed for herself what was… Read More ›
When Ella D’Arcy’s collection of short stories Monochromes, which includes “The Pleasure-Pilgrim,” was published in 1895, she was a fixture of the 1890s London literary scene. She was an editor of the provocative journal The Yellow Book and was compared… Read More ›
One of Rudyard Kipling’s many stories of life among noncommissioned soldiers in India, “The Courting of Dinah Shadd” was first published in Harper’s Weekly in the United States in 1890. It also gave its name to the volume of short… Read More ›
Constance Fenimore Woolson’s “Miss Grief” can be read as a comment on the literary position of American women writers near the end of the 19th century. The story contrasts the literary abilities, reputations, and social and economic circumstances of two… Read More ›
The fourth novel by Chilean writer José Donoso (1924–96), The Obscene Bird of the Night, is widely regarded as his masterpiece. His other significant novels include Coronation (Coronación, 1957), This Sunday (Este Domingo, 1966), The Space without Limits (El lugar… Read More ›
You must be logged in to post a comment.