A governess arrives at an isolated English mansion to care for two seemingly angelic but rather strange young children, and the appearance of two evil phantoms leads her to question her sanity.

James' controversial novel probes the mind of an American heiress as she becomes aware of the affair between her husband and her father's young wife.

James' mastery of psychological character development is studied in this assessment of his provocative avante garde novel.

"Henry James is considered by many to be the greatest American novelist. Several of his shorter works, such as The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller, are staples of the high school curriculum, and his longer, more complicated novels, including The Bostonians, The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and many more, are some of the greatest and most influential ever written." "Critical Companion to Henry James covers the life and works of Henry James...

Lambert Strether, a mild middle-aged American of no particular achievements, is dispatched to Paris from the manufacturing empire of Woollett, Massachusetts. The mission conferred on him by his august patron, Mrs. Newsome, is to discover what, or who, is keeping her son Chad in the notorious city of pleasure, and to bring him home. But Strether finds Chad transformed by the influence of a remarkable woman; and as the Parisian spring advances, he himself...