Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece
- ISBN-10
- 0871403285
- ISBN-13
- 9780871403285
- Category
- Literary Criticism
- Pages
- 416
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2012-08-27
- Publisher
- W. W. Norton & Company
- Author
- Michael Gorra
Description
A revelatory biography of the American master as told through the lens of his greatest novel. Henry James (1843–1916) has had many biographers, but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the modern novel, combining elements of biography, criticism, and travelogue in re-creating the dramatic backstory of James’s masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady (1881). Gorra, an eminent literary critic, shows how this novel—the scandalous story of the expatriate American heiress Isabel Archer—came to be written in the first place. Traveling to Florence, Rome, Paris, and England, Gorra sheds new light on James’s family, the European literary circles—George Eliot, Flaubert, Turgenev—in which James made his name, and the psychological forces that enabled him to create this most memorable of female protagonists. Appealing to readers of Menand’s The Metaphysical Club and McCullough’s The Greater Journey, Portrait of a Novel provides a brilliant account of the greatest American novel of expatriate life ever written. It becomes a piercing detective story on its own.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2012-08-27
- 385 pages
- Paperback
- W. W. Norton & Company
Similar books
-
A Historical Guide to Henry James
By John Carlos Rowe, Eric HaralsonWendy Graham, “HenryJames's Subterranean Blues: A Rereading of ThePrincess Casamassima,” Modern Fiction Studies 40 ... Leland S. Person, Henry James and the Suspense of Masculinity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), ...
-
After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie
By Michael Gorra28 Forster insists on seeing British imperialism not in political or historical terms but as a problem in individual human relations. Aziz can't forget that he is the ruled and Fielding the ruler. Their friendship grows increasingly ...
-
The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War
By Michael GorraA New York Times Notable Book of 2020 How do we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century? asks Michael Gorra, in this reconsideration of Faulkner's life and legacy.
-
The Cambridge Companion to Henry James
By Jonathan FreedmanThe Cambridge Companion to Henry James provides a critical introduction to James's work.
-
Henry James: The Mature Master
By Sheldon M. NovickOf the heirlooms, William was to have the silver, as well as the furniture that he already had in his keeping. Henry would have a few pictures, including the portrait oi their Scottish grand mother. Hob was to receive a carefully ...
-
The New York Stories of Henry James
By Henry JamesHere Colm Tóibín, the author of the Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Master, a portrait of Henry James, brings together for the first time all the stories that James set in New York City.
-
Hawthorne in Concord
By Philip McFarlandWritten to celebrate the bicentennial of Hawthorne's birth, this fascinating chronicle of the author's most fertile years reconstructs his love affair with the town of Concord--a Massachusetts village that hosted more than its share of ...
-
Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet
By James AtlasMeanwhile, Delmore was preparing his own campaign; in New York, he had seen James Agee and Philip Rahv, he reported to Laughlin. “The former might help with the Time review... . But for Christ's sake,” he cautioned, “don't do anything ...
-
The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany
By Michael GorraWhat is it about Germany and the travel book that puts them seemingly at odds? With one foot in the library and one on the street, Michael Gorra offers both an answer to this question and his own traveler's tale of Germany.
-
The Dream of the Great American Novel
By Lawrence BuellThe first book in many years to take in the full sweep of national fiction, The Dream of the Great American Novel explains why this supposedly antiquated idea continues to thrive.