Kurzbeschreibung

When Isabel Archer, a young American with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as bright and open. Rejecting suitors who offer her wealth and devotion, she follows her own path, and finds it leads to a dark and constricted future. This is the masterpiece of James's middleperiod, and Nicola Bradbury's new introduction provides a stimulating way in to this moving novel. The text is that of the New York Edition and includes Henry James's own Preface.

Beschreibung

'One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.'
Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe. She rejects two eligible suitors in her fervent commitment to liberty and independence, declaring that she will never marry. Thanks to the generosity of her devoted cousin Ralph, she is free to make her own choice about her destiny. Yet in the intoxicating worlds of Paris, Florence, and Rome, her fond illusions of self-reliance are twisted by the machinations of her friends
and apparent allies. What had seemed to be a vista of infinite promise steadily closes around her and becomes instead a 'house of suffocation'.
Considered by many as one of the finest novels in the English language, this is Henry James's most poised achievement, written at the height of his fame in 1881. It is at once a dramatic Victorian tale of betrayal and a wholly modern psychological study of a woman caught in a web of relations she only comes to understand too late. This edition reproduces the revised New York Edition, with James's own Preface.
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Klappentext

Considered by many as one of the finest novels in the English language, The Portrait of a Lady is both a dramatic Victorian tale of betrayal and a wholly modern psychological study of a woman caught in machinations she only comes to understand too late. This new edition usefully tracks the major textual changes James made for his New York Edition.