Selected Tales (Penguin Classics)
Henry James
Language: English
Pages: 704
ISBN: 0140436944
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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 Stratford tour guide embellishes the Shakespeare legend, while in the late masterpiece 'The Jolly Corner', an elderly American returns from Europe and encounters a strange apparition. Haunting, witty and beautifully drawn, James's tales are as complex and resonant as his novels.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
he hadn’t yet done. At sight of her look, however – the gleam, as it might have been, of a queer suspicion – he bent to her kindly and tapped her cheek. ‘Oh it’s all right. We must fall back on the Putchins. Do you remember what she said? – “They’ve made it so pretty now.” They have made it pretty, and it’s a first-rate show. It’s a first-rate show and a first-rate billet, and He was a first-rate poet, and you’re a first-rate woman – to put up so sweetly, I mean, with my nonsense.’ She
the gleam of his inner commentary. That probably leaked in spite of him out of his poor old eyes. ‘Much of it, in such places as this,’ he heard himself adding, ‘is of course said very irresponsibly.’ Such places as this! – he winced at the words as soon as he had uttered them. There was no wincing, however, on the part of his pleasant companions. ‘Exactly so; the whole thing becomes a sort of stiff smug convention – like a dressed-up sacred doll in a Spanish church – which you’re a monster if
instant: ‘Don’t you seem to take the ground that we were guilty – that you were ever guilty – of something we shouldn’t have been? What did we ever do that was secret, or underhand, or any way not to be acknowledged? What did we do but exchange our young vows with the best faith in the world – publicly, rejoicingly, with the full assent of every one connected with us? I mean of course,’ he said with his grave kind smile, ‘till we broke off so completely because we found that – practically,
Then, ‘He has a million a year,’ he lucidly added. ‘But he hasn’t you.’ ‘And he isn’t – no, he isn’t – you!’ she murmured as he drew her to his breast. NOTES Four Meetings New York Edition, Vol. XVI; first magazine publication in Scribner’s Monthly, November 1877; first book publication in Daisy Miller (English edition, 1879). The title suggests the influence of ‘Three Meetings’ by Ivan Turgenev (1818–83), the Russian novelist and short story writer whom James admired perhaps above
I’m always afraid. But I do what I can, as you see. Excusez du peu!’56 I thought this young lady of an inspiration at least as untrammelled as her unexpatriated sisters, and her despondency in the true note of much of their predominant prattle. At the same time she had by no means caught, as it seemed to me, what Miss Ruck called the natural American style. Whatever her style was, however, it had a fascination – I knew not what (as I called it) distinction, and yet I knew not what odd freedom.