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Great Short Works of Henry James
Includes Washington Square, Daisy Miller, The Aspern Papers, The Pupil, The Turn of the Screw, and The Beast in the Jungle.
490 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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About the author
Henry James
4,683 books3,976 followersHenry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 12, 2020
Without further reading, a comprehensive view of James cannot be gained from 6 of his short novels. He is one of those authors: namely, no matter how many of his books you power through, there is always an infinite amount of reading left to do, like Trollope and Dickens. Your shelves will collapse if you try to collect it all.
I took this compendium to be a good place to start, though I battled my way through Watch and Ward years ago, only to discover that James swore on a stack of bibles he never wrote it in later life. What you get here are: Daisy Miller, The Aspern Papers, Beast in the Jungle, Turn of the Screw, The Pupil, and Washington Square. I don't care if James called these nouvelles, Washington Square is a full-length novel. The others are still long. He was incapable of writing short short stories, it seems.
Tempting as it is to call James old fashioned with his two first names and tireless scribbling, I will do my best to outline the pluses and minuses of embarking on the endless journey of reading him.
Starting with the minuses:
His literary texture is too stiff.
Too many adverbs, subordinate clauses, way too much use of passive voice, weak verbs, unspecific words like "thing" cropping up with high frequency, too loquacious. He describes around subjects, instead of nailing them to the page with any sort of precision. Use of filler words, like I tend, sometimes, I think, perhaps, to do, occasionally, one might say, in some of my typical, so-called, reviews. Reading him can be like drinking diluted tea, if you get out of bed in the morning craving the rare lightning strikes of mot juste. The dialogue is grossly inefficient, and he can take things a little slow, plodding around the fancy garden of his subject matter, never calling a spade a spade. Too many similes, repetition, and so forth. His choice of subject is rather safe, rather too polite, as if he were writing with his pinkie extended. He is careful only to insinuate, instead of telling it to you straight, and why would he risk doing anything wild, like that foolhardy bloke D. H. Lawrence? Finally, the dialogue for different characters contain the same diction - they all sound like H. James.
There are pluses, in case you were wondering. In fact, there are many reasons to read James.
His style creates cumulative force and inescapable tension. He is not limited to one style. The stories do not read the same. They build into their own consistency, constructing a world out of ornate language. Washington Square, for instance, is a powerful romance, a heartfelt character study, and much more. The narration can be forceful, and he achieves massive character depths with ample, weighty, dense cumulonimbi of descriptive paragraphs, looming over the atmospheric setting. This descriptive power is masterful, immersive and accounts for much of the nuance and sophistication of the tales.
The dialogue might take a little getting used to for modern readers. It seems to rely on revealing meaning gradually through the stressed elocutions of distressed minds, of suggestive minds. He explores the vulnerability of innocence, the stubbornness of old people, the toll of experience, is concerned chiefly with the privileged classes and enchanted by Europe's locales: London, Paris, Italy, etc., probably since he spent most of his life abroad.
Let's not beat around the bush any longer. Henry James was a towering genius. So what if he liked to dress up his stories with eccentric, absurd levels of detail? Maybe he is long-winded, but he had things to say - not all at once, mind you - but plenty of grand statements in the offing. Both a pioneer and an old school automaton, James will challenge and enlighten you.
Washington Square and Daisy Miller were my favorites from this collection. Essentially explications of the relationships between men and women, the courting period of life, and extending these verbal jousting matches into maturity, and spinsterhood. There is some groveling, and a character even raises his voice once or twice. These two stories were brilliant for many reasons, and did not rely on plot to carry them to moving conclusions.
The remainder of the stories require much unpacking. They were dense, vaguely unpleasant, ripe with the same tension I felt while reading "Heart of Darkness" but not nearly as interesting to me. Perhaps I'll reread them after a few thousand pages of James have passed before my jaded eyes.
I took this compendium to be a good place to start, though I battled my way through Watch and Ward years ago, only to discover that James swore on a stack of bibles he never wrote it in later life. What you get here are: Daisy Miller, The Aspern Papers, Beast in the Jungle, Turn of the Screw, The Pupil, and Washington Square. I don't care if James called these nouvelles, Washington Square is a full-length novel. The others are still long. He was incapable of writing short short stories, it seems.
Tempting as it is to call James old fashioned with his two first names and tireless scribbling, I will do my best to outline the pluses and minuses of embarking on the endless journey of reading him.
Starting with the minuses:
His literary texture is too stiff.
Too many adverbs, subordinate clauses, way too much use of passive voice, weak verbs, unspecific words like "thing" cropping up with high frequency, too loquacious. He describes around subjects, instead of nailing them to the page with any sort of precision. Use of filler words, like I tend, sometimes, I think, perhaps, to do, occasionally, one might say, in some of my typical, so-called, reviews. Reading him can be like drinking diluted tea, if you get out of bed in the morning craving the rare lightning strikes of mot juste. The dialogue is grossly inefficient, and he can take things a little slow, plodding around the fancy garden of his subject matter, never calling a spade a spade. Too many similes, repetition, and so forth. His choice of subject is rather safe, rather too polite, as if he were writing with his pinkie extended. He is careful only to insinuate, instead of telling it to you straight, and why would he risk doing anything wild, like that foolhardy bloke D. H. Lawrence? Finally, the dialogue for different characters contain the same diction - they all sound like H. James.
There are pluses, in case you were wondering. In fact, there are many reasons to read James.
His style creates cumulative force and inescapable tension. He is not limited to one style. The stories do not read the same. They build into their own consistency, constructing a world out of ornate language. Washington Square, for instance, is a powerful romance, a heartfelt character study, and much more. The narration can be forceful, and he achieves massive character depths with ample, weighty, dense cumulonimbi of descriptive paragraphs, looming over the atmospheric setting. This descriptive power is masterful, immersive and accounts for much of the nuance and sophistication of the tales.
The dialogue might take a little getting used to for modern readers. It seems to rely on revealing meaning gradually through the stressed elocutions of distressed minds, of suggestive minds. He explores the vulnerability of innocence, the stubbornness of old people, the toll of experience, is concerned chiefly with the privileged classes and enchanted by Europe's locales: London, Paris, Italy, etc., probably since he spent most of his life abroad.
Let's not beat around the bush any longer. Henry James was a towering genius. So what if he liked to dress up his stories with eccentric, absurd levels of detail? Maybe he is long-winded, but he had things to say - not all at once, mind you - but plenty of grand statements in the offing. Both a pioneer and an old school automaton, James will challenge and enlighten you.
Washington Square and Daisy Miller were my favorites from this collection. Essentially explications of the relationships between men and women, the courting period of life, and extending these verbal jousting matches into maturity, and spinsterhood. There is some groveling, and a character even raises his voice once or twice. These two stories were brilliant for many reasons, and did not rely on plot to carry them to moving conclusions.
The remainder of the stories require much unpacking. They were dense, vaguely unpleasant, ripe with the same tension I felt while reading "Heart of Darkness" but not nearly as interesting to me. Perhaps I'll reread them after a few thousand pages of James have passed before my jaded eyes.
June 19, 2024
Henry James and I live a truly dysfunctional love story. One day I adore him, and the harmony is more than any mortal has ever known. Next day, against all his solemn promises, he errs again, goes crazy and leaves me in such fits of despair that I become convinced we would never be able to talk to each other again.
The same happened with this collection. I moderately enjoyed his Daisy Miller, opened my heart to his lovely Washington Square, and ascended to sublime peaks of adoration for his superb Aspern Papers. And just when I was ready to promise him that I would never again push him away, he left me comparatively cold with The Pupil and absolutely went bananas with The Turn of the Screw. For the latter's last 40 or 50 pages, I was in pure agony. The literary OCD, the incessant jabber, the craziness! So, we yelled, we blamed, we threw knives at each other. By the end of it, I could not discern anymore whether it was me or the governess who had gone crazy. Henry tried to patch thing up with The Beast in the Jungle, a haunting story of a misspent life, but it was too late. By then, my glorious five stars prepared for him had lost their shine and shriveled into four.
So, if you're thinking of reading Washington Square or The Aspern Papers, please do. They’re true pieces of Jamesian beauty and, between the two, I am very partial to the latter. The Venetian atmosphere, the hidden motivations, the nostalgia, the poetic ghost that flutters above all, the style –everything was absolute perfection. The Turn of the Screw, however – I don’t know... I mean, all the pieces are there. Governess – check. Haunted house – check. Initial shivers down the spine – check. But then, James can’t control himself and starts throwing words, words, words at you, until you drown in a delirious ocean of subordinate clauses and forget to care anymore. Yes, it definitely occurred to me that James might have wanted to drive me to madness with his prose, so that, maybe, peeking out from my own, I could understand hers, but… is that a good move? By the end of it, the only scary thing left was the never-ending stretch between me and the last page. I enjoyed the idea of the story, and the beginning was so promising! And then, like a crazy lover, James overdid it. He threw it all out the window in a fit of unwarranted madness.
I absolutely love James’s baroque turn of phrase and his almost pathological need to use half a page to end a sentence. I revel in being shown every little detail, in witnessing the birth of each little emotion. I like my James as I like my furniture – weighty, flamboyant, heavily ornamented. But sometimes, when your beloved sofa forgets that, in the end, its role is to comfortably accommodate your sensitive derriere, it starts being painful.
So, four stars, even though the pain was so bad I almost went down to three. We’ll meet again, Henry dear. But let me stay away for a while, lick my fresh wounds, heal, and in the end, remind myself how much, after all, and despite everything, I love you.
The same happened with this collection. I moderately enjoyed his Daisy Miller, opened my heart to his lovely Washington Square, and ascended to sublime peaks of adoration for his superb Aspern Papers. And just when I was ready to promise him that I would never again push him away, he left me comparatively cold with The Pupil and absolutely went bananas with The Turn of the Screw. For the latter's last 40 or 50 pages, I was in pure agony. The literary OCD, the incessant jabber, the craziness! So, we yelled, we blamed, we threw knives at each other. By the end of it, I could not discern anymore whether it was me or the governess who had gone crazy. Henry tried to patch thing up with The Beast in the Jungle, a haunting story of a misspent life, but it was too late. By then, my glorious five stars prepared for him had lost their shine and shriveled into four.
So, if you're thinking of reading Washington Square or The Aspern Papers, please do. They’re true pieces of Jamesian beauty and, between the two, I am very partial to the latter. The Venetian atmosphere, the hidden motivations, the nostalgia, the poetic ghost that flutters above all, the style –everything was absolute perfection. The Turn of the Screw, however – I don’t know... I mean, all the pieces are there. Governess – check. Haunted house – check. Initial shivers down the spine – check. But then, James can’t control himself and starts throwing words, words, words at you, until you drown in a delirious ocean of subordinate clauses and forget to care anymore. Yes, it definitely occurred to me that James might have wanted to drive me to madness with his prose, so that, maybe, peeking out from my own, I could understand hers, but… is that a good move? By the end of it, the only scary thing left was the never-ending stretch between me and the last page. I enjoyed the idea of the story, and the beginning was so promising! And then, like a crazy lover, James overdid it. He threw it all out the window in a fit of unwarranted madness.
I absolutely love James’s baroque turn of phrase and his almost pathological need to use half a page to end a sentence. I revel in being shown every little detail, in witnessing the birth of each little emotion. I like my James as I like my furniture – weighty, flamboyant, heavily ornamented. But sometimes, when your beloved sofa forgets that, in the end, its role is to comfortably accommodate your sensitive derriere, it starts being painful.
So, four stars, even though the pain was so bad I almost went down to three. We’ll meet again, Henry dear. But let me stay away for a while, lick my fresh wounds, heal, and in the end, remind myself how much, after all, and despite everything, I love you.
January 6, 2019
Especially nice to re-read Washington Square. getting out of the narrator's perspective on women etc., which is TERRIBLE, I really enjoyed these novellas. For ex. I love Catherine Sloper and fearless Daisy Miller. I love how so many end in death. Weak hearts!
This book was my father's, date inside the cover 1/75. It was so sweet to see what he underlined and the notes he made from when he was in college. The book kind of fell apart as I was reading it. I feel so lucky to have his old books.
This book was my father's, date inside the cover 1/75. It was so sweet to see what he underlined and the notes he made from when he was in college. The book kind of fell apart as I was reading it. I feel so lucky to have his old books.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 19, 2025
Couldn’t get through Aspern Papers and some of the others. But Washington Sq was so epic. Daisy Miller and The Pupil good too. He’s kind of “this woman was written by a man” final boss
omnibus
November 13, 2020This withered Perennial Classic paperback crams in six nouvelles into 490 pages, servicing tiny font and minuscule margins to their greatest extents. The nouvelles are Daisy Miller, Washington Square, The Aspern Papers, The Pupil, The Turn of the Screw and The Beast in the Jungle. I'll update this review periodically as I read each one.
Review of Daisy Miller
James's tragic character Daisy Miller presents the idea of reckless irreverence to foreign culture and custom through flirtatious innocence to a perfect pitch in this novella, but the story suffers from a severe lack of emotion. A few scenes seem to try their utmost to tug at the reader's heartstrings, but pitifully fail, instead coming across empty and lifeless. It wasn't terrible overall, though, just ok.
2 stars
Review of The Pupil
An intriguing and admirable little Jamesian potter. A bit of added oomph would've been unnecessary but still appreciated. Solid 3 star calamity.
3 stars
Review of Daisy Miller
James's tragic character Daisy Miller presents the idea of reckless irreverence to foreign culture and custom through flirtatious innocence to a perfect pitch in this novella, but the story suffers from a severe lack of emotion. A few scenes seem to try their utmost to tug at the reader's heartstrings, but pitifully fail, instead coming across empty and lifeless. It wasn't terrible overall, though, just ok.
2 stars
Review of The Pupil
An intriguing and admirable little Jamesian potter. A bit of added oomph would've been unnecessary but still appreciated. Solid 3 star calamity.
3 stars
Read
April 22, 2011Well, I did it. I read "Teh James", as I will now refer to him. My response was about what I expected it to be: mostly bored, occasionally impressed with the craft of it, mostly interested in how he expresses characters' interiority. Oh, and whoa, creepy sexual connotations in The Turn of the Screw! Actually, The Turn of the Screw sort of made it all worth it. Reminded me that I really really really like Gothic stuff.
Next up on the eternal list of books I am embarrassed I never read: Picture of Dorian Gray.
Next up on the eternal list of books I am embarrassed I never read: Picture of Dorian Gray.
November 29, 2010
This is a superb but obscure edition, likely the effect of the author's works being in the public domain. The tales are all classics and for James rather more accessible than some of the novels. All are different but highly recommended, from the framed gothic tale of The Turn of the Screw to the doomed love of Washington Square. This is well worth the effort to purchase & explore.
January 8, 2008
I read "Daisy Miller" and it was somewhat entertaining. I wonder if James wrote all women as vapid, useless intellectual drains on society? But James' writing style is so wonderfully structured that it's like reading a slow orgasm. I wish he were alive to just follow me around an narrate my life.
July 9, 2015
Always an excellent read. I find that
I like to reread
James. He's really a master at creating suspense and questions about character, such as reliable or unreliable narrators. Recommend "The Turn of the Screw" and analysis for newbies.
I like to reread
James. He's really a master at creating suspense and questions about character, such as reliable or unreliable narrators. Recommend "The Turn of the Screw" and analysis for newbies.
April 15, 2015
As much as I want to rag on James for confusing me, his writing style is unique and impeccable. Great read even though I grind my teeth while reading it, you will benefit from it!!!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews