What do you think?
Rate this book
Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography)
One of the Best Books of 2012: The New Yorker , Wall Street Journal , Guardian , The Millions , Kirkus Reviews , Boston Phoenix 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. 10 illustrations
Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography)
One of the Best Books of 2012: The New Yorker , Wall Street Journal , Guardian , The Millions , Kirkus Reviews , Boston Phoenix 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. 10 illustrations
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
80 people are currently reading
1160 people want to read
About the author
Michael Gorra
21 books24 followersMichael Gorra is an American professor of English and literature, currently serving as the Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College, where he has taught since 1985.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
June 24, 2024
Really delicious book - contextualizing James’s life and process through the lens of portrait
July 23, 2019
3.5 stars
An enjoyable read for fans of James and/or his brilliant The Portrait of a Lady - but this is pitched more at generalists and undergraduates, I'd say. If you're familiar with James' biography, with late Victorian literature and the history of the novel, James' other writings and Portrait itself, then there may be little that's new here.
It's interesting that Gorra discusses the variants between the first edition of Portrait and the revised 1906 edition, especially in terms of things that James couldn't articulate, due to his own youth as well as novelistic conventions, in the 1880s. There are also flashes of deep and close reading such as the opening scene when Isabel stands in the doorway at Gardencourt.
Later, though, the close readings have a tendency to become storytelling rather than analysis, and veer too much into crib or gloss territory. Telling us that James is interested in epistemology, for example, is, surely, self-evident to readers of his novels - no? And skilled readers would have picked up already on the echoes of Paradise Lost scattered throughout the book, shored up by the naming of Gardencourt.
There's lots of interesting research here surrounding the assessments of the novel itself: biographical information, travelogues as Gorra traces James' geographical footsteps, discussions of his sexuality, publishing information in the US vs. Europe, critical receptions of Portrait - all the paraphernalia you might use to keep undergraduates interested, and presented in lively fashion though not necessarily deeply. And there's no scholarly apparatus, no siting against the critical literature.
One of the most enlightening discussion points for me was Gorra's reading as an American: he picks up things I hadn't related to Isabel's conception of freedom as a marker of American self-identity - and how she has to learn in the Old World of Europe that to be untrammelled and unshaped by history, culture and the past is an illusion.
So a fun read for me and it's always fascinating to see how someone else interprets a favourite book.
An enjoyable read for fans of James and/or his brilliant The Portrait of a Lady - but this is pitched more at generalists and undergraduates, I'd say. If you're familiar with James' biography, with late Victorian literature and the history of the novel, James' other writings and Portrait itself, then there may be little that's new here.
It's interesting that Gorra discusses the variants between the first edition of Portrait and the revised 1906 edition, especially in terms of things that James couldn't articulate, due to his own youth as well as novelistic conventions, in the 1880s. There are also flashes of deep and close reading such as the opening scene when Isabel stands in the doorway at Gardencourt.
Later, though, the close readings have a tendency to become storytelling rather than analysis, and veer too much into crib or gloss territory. Telling us that James is interested in epistemology, for example, is, surely, self-evident to readers of his novels - no? And skilled readers would have picked up already on the echoes of Paradise Lost scattered throughout the book, shored up by the naming of Gardencourt.
There's lots of interesting research here surrounding the assessments of the novel itself: biographical information, travelogues as Gorra traces James' geographical footsteps, discussions of his sexuality, publishing information in the US vs. Europe, critical receptions of Portrait - all the paraphernalia you might use to keep undergraduates interested, and presented in lively fashion though not necessarily deeply. And there's no scholarly apparatus, no siting against the critical literature.
One of the most enlightening discussion points for me was Gorra's reading as an American: he picks up things I hadn't related to Isabel's conception of freedom as a marker of American self-identity - and how she has to learn in the Old World of Europe that to be untrammelled and unshaped by history, culture and the past is an illusion.
So a fun read for me and it's always fascinating to see how someone else interprets a favourite book.
November 29, 2012
Anyone who is at all in love with Henry James, as I am, must read Michael Gorra's book. It is insightful, erudite, challenging, and deeply engaging. Of course it's better if you've read Portrait of a Lady, even many years ago (as many of us have), but I assure you Gorra's elucidations and ruminations will send you to James's masterpiece once more to find and savor all those special moments he discusses. But more than just a story about a story, Gorra's book presents Henry James and his writing as truly ground-breaking, paving the way for the likes of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence in the 'original' use of a character's self-consciousness, and in the presentation of a novel not as a series of events that toss the characters here and there, but as the study of "character" that must respond to, or act upon, life as it happens -- choices that are made that spring from the person's character.
Intelligent in the highest and best sense of that word, sensitive, and full of wonder -- The PORTRAIT OF A NOVEL is simply magnificent.
Intelligent in the highest and best sense of that word, sensitive, and full of wonder -- The PORTRAIT OF A NOVEL is simply magnificent.
October 21, 2012
A wonderful book.
Gorra seems to have implemented the following approach in preparing his text.
First, he read both the 1881 version of Portrait of a Lady and then the revision of 1906, which James published as part of the New York edition of his fiction.
Then Gorra noticed and established in great detail how very different the two versions are, especially in his rendering of his heroine's final decisions at the conclusion of the novel. After all, Gorra notes, over the course of the twenty-five years James had spent in Isabel Archer's company, he had come to know her better. And so he wanted to reveal aspects of her character and life that he could not have discerned or expressed upon first acquaintance, and Gorra's revelations are startling.
Third, Gorra wonders how James himself had changed, what experiences he had assimilated that enabled him to understand his heroine so much more clearly in 1906 than in 1881. So here's the assumption - that there is in fact a connection between life and work, which, in this case, I believe is warranted and fully substantiated by the evidence of his biography that survives.
And so Gorra develops his biographical study of James from that perspective, with those questions in mind. He succeeds marvelously.
The results of Gorra's work only reinforce the judgement that I've developed over my years of reading biographies and biographical studies of Henry James and his family - and, I must admit, identifying with James and exporting my assessments of my own experience into James' life.
It seems to me that there is very much of James in certain of his women characters - the question of his sexual orientation, which appears to be settled, set aside altogether. James, like Isabel, valued personal autonomy, an independent life of the mind, the life of the detached observer. He couldn't live in any other way. He had to defend himself. In order to preserve personal autonomy, independence of mind, he had to withdraw from intimate relationships with other people, who sought unremittingly to force him to live as they thought he ought, that convention required, etc., to take possession of him fully, granting him nothing for himself. This is not to say that he wasn't sociable, which he was altogether, but he decided early on, that he had to leave the US and his family, to save himself, to place himself in an environment in which more tolerant - and indifferent - persons would allow him to live as he needed and yet invite him to dinner or to weekend in their country homes. Of course, he had to leave the US. After all, he wasn't a swashbuckling predator, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who would lived out his life in a fever of testosterone poisoning. And so there was no place for him among such creatures or among the people who hold such individuals as a cultural ideal and imperative, whom all real men aspire to become, or at least to emulate in public. And so because he wanted to earn his living as a writer, he couldn't present to the public stories of male characters like himself, who harbored his personal issues, resolved them as he did, and made the life choices he made. Had he done so, he would only have encountered contempt and poor sales, much as he would encounter today among the more primitive and repulsive specimens of arrogant, ignorant Bible-beating Americans today - think Billy Graham or Rush Limbaugh. So perforce, his principle, greatest and most highly developed characters are women, whom he developed in order to explore, interpret and assimilate, as he evolved, his own experience, development and sense of proper and rightful place in the world - and to sell books.
It is Gorra's great achievement to have discerned these connections and to have rendered them in such accessible and engaging prose.
And to my mind,
Gorra seems to have implemented the following approach in preparing his text.
First, he read both the 1881 version of Portrait of a Lady and then the revision of 1906, which James published as part of the New York edition of his fiction.
Then Gorra noticed and established in great detail how very different the two versions are, especially in his rendering of his heroine's final decisions at the conclusion of the novel. After all, Gorra notes, over the course of the twenty-five years James had spent in Isabel Archer's company, he had come to know her better. And so he wanted to reveal aspects of her character and life that he could not have discerned or expressed upon first acquaintance, and Gorra's revelations are startling.
Third, Gorra wonders how James himself had changed, what experiences he had assimilated that enabled him to understand his heroine so much more clearly in 1906 than in 1881. So here's the assumption - that there is in fact a connection between life and work, which, in this case, I believe is warranted and fully substantiated by the evidence of his biography that survives.
And so Gorra develops his biographical study of James from that perspective, with those questions in mind. He succeeds marvelously.
The results of Gorra's work only reinforce the judgement that I've developed over my years of reading biographies and biographical studies of Henry James and his family - and, I must admit, identifying with James and exporting my assessments of my own experience into James' life.
It seems to me that there is very much of James in certain of his women characters - the question of his sexual orientation, which appears to be settled, set aside altogether. James, like Isabel, valued personal autonomy, an independent life of the mind, the life of the detached observer. He couldn't live in any other way. He had to defend himself. In order to preserve personal autonomy, independence of mind, he had to withdraw from intimate relationships with other people, who sought unremittingly to force him to live as they thought he ought, that convention required, etc., to take possession of him fully, granting him nothing for himself. This is not to say that he wasn't sociable, which he was altogether, but he decided early on, that he had to leave the US and his family, to save himself, to place himself in an environment in which more tolerant - and indifferent - persons would allow him to live as he needed and yet invite him to dinner or to weekend in their country homes. Of course, he had to leave the US. After all, he wasn't a swashbuckling predator, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who would lived out his life in a fever of testosterone poisoning. And so there was no place for him among such creatures or among the people who hold such individuals as a cultural ideal and imperative, whom all real men aspire to become, or at least to emulate in public. And so because he wanted to earn his living as a writer, he couldn't present to the public stories of male characters like himself, who harbored his personal issues, resolved them as he did, and made the life choices he made. Had he done so, he would only have encountered contempt and poor sales, much as he would encounter today among the more primitive and repulsive specimens of arrogant, ignorant Bible-beating Americans today - think Billy Graham or Rush Limbaugh. So perforce, his principle, greatest and most highly developed characters are women, whom he developed in order to explore, interpret and assimilate, as he evolved, his own experience, development and sense of proper and rightful place in the world - and to sell books.
It is Gorra's great achievement to have discerned these connections and to have rendered them in such accessible and engaging prose.
And to my mind,
July 10, 2018
A terrific book about a book. This ‘biography of a novel’ offers an accessible account both of James’ life and career and of the novel that more than any other made his name. An excellent piece of criticism, even if I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says.
Where I part ways with him particularly, is in his preference for the revised 1908 version of the text. He has the literary consensus on his side: most everybody thinks that in the case of Portrait, the New York Edition text is superior to the earlier version, and that is the text most often reprinted. But the more I look at the rewrites, the more I think literary critics' claims for their success and enrichment of the novel’s story is hugely exaggerated, and the late style mannerisms he injects in parts of the novel do nothing to enrich it. At the most, they stifle some of the freshness and directness of the original. I even prefer the original ending to that of the much vaunted rewrite of the kiss and the final paragraph!
For a little more of that, see my comment on the novel.
But that’s just a cavil, and in fact: it’s good to find things to disagree with in a book like this. It would just be a boring essay if one didn’t. As it is, I think this is a must read for anyone interested in Henry James or in the 19th century novel (or simply the history of fiction writing) in general. He also has many interesting things to say on the organization of the literary market, for instance, and on how that shaped the novels that were written.
Where I part ways with him particularly, is in his preference for the revised 1908 version of the text. He has the literary consensus on his side: most everybody thinks that in the case of Portrait, the New York Edition text is superior to the earlier version, and that is the text most often reprinted. But the more I look at the rewrites, the more I think literary critics' claims for their success and enrichment of the novel’s story is hugely exaggerated, and the late style mannerisms he injects in parts of the novel do nothing to enrich it. At the most, they stifle some of the freshness and directness of the original. I even prefer the original ending to that of the much vaunted rewrite of the kiss and the final paragraph!
For a little more of that, see my comment on the novel.
But that’s just a cavil, and in fact: it’s good to find things to disagree with in a book like this. It would just be a boring essay if one didn’t. As it is, I think this is a must read for anyone interested in Henry James or in the 19th century novel (or simply the history of fiction writing) in general. He also has many interesting things to say on the organization of the literary market, for instance, and on how that shaped the novels that were written.
January 31, 2013
It is brilliantly-conceived and brilliantly-written. Gorra weaves into a coherent narrative elements of literary criticism, biography (set firmly in the context of the places in which James worked on this and other works) and history. By treating Isabel Archer as a person (or character) and not as archetype, Gorra also provides better insight into her reasons for returning to Osmond than I've ever been able to conceive on my own, and does so more convincingly than most other critics.
It is best-read with a copy of the James novel handy, and, though hardly essential, it is an even better read with a nearby copy of the surprisingly good "Complete Works of Henry James" for the kindle (unwieldy in formats other than e-book). Appropriately, Gorra refers often to "The Portrait of a Lady", but also to many essays of which I had previously been unaware.
A final note: one can easily read this, on its own, straight through and not miss a beat. It is not essential to read any other texts concurrently, but it is also a very good prep for a re-read of the novel.
It is best-read with a copy of the James novel handy, and, though hardly essential, it is an even better read with a nearby copy of the surprisingly good "Complete Works of Henry James" for the kindle (unwieldy in formats other than e-book). Appropriately, Gorra refers often to "The Portrait of a Lady", but also to many essays of which I had previously been unaware.
A final note: one can easily read this, on its own, straight through and not miss a beat. It is not essential to read any other texts concurrently, but it is also a very good prep for a re-read of the novel.
December 6, 2019
Having not long finished re-reading The Portrait of a Lady it was great to discover this book, and to not only get further insight into James' great novel, but to have a virtual biography in addition, along with James' views on writing. James was a constant traveller, spending years on the Continent, and years as a virtual Londoner, before finally taking English citizenship late in life. He went back to America several times, but never felt completely at home there. This sense of displacement is behind much that appears in his books.
Gorra has done a terrific job in honing in on how James lived, how he wrote, his possible love life, his friendships and much more. Sometimes the chronology becomes just a little challenging as he skips back in time to pick up some new thread, but overall this is a fascinating read.
Gorra has done a terrific job in honing in on how James lived, how he wrote, his possible love life, his friendships and much more. Sometimes the chronology becomes just a little challenging as he skips back in time to pick up some new thread, but overall this is a fascinating read.
April 15, 2013
Added April 15 2013..So happy to see that this book was one of the three nominees for the Pulitzer in Biography and Autobiography. An excellent book that deserves the recognition.
I read several really good books last year but this was my favorite. I must confess that I approached it with some hesitation. It was a book about Henry James written by a college professor. Would it be too dense? Would I struggle to get through? My fears vanished on page one. It is a beautifully written book and I loved every page.
The heart of the Gorra’s book is an analysis of James’ Portrait of a Lady which he stretches out over the course of the book. That in and of itself would have been enough as it is an exquisite story that he elucidates by highlighting subtle references to James’ other works and parallels to his life. But through the analysis he has inserted chapters on James’ travels, his family and friendships, his peers such as Eliot and Turgenev, a history of publishing in the Victorian age, a short biography, and an analysis of how James’ work makes the transition from plot based novels of Dickens and Eliot to the character focused works of Proust and Virginia Woolfe. Gorra has woven it together seamlessly and for anyone who loves the 19th century English novel it is an enchanting read.
I sometimes look back wistfully and think that I should have been an English major. All those wonderful books to read followed by scintillating lectures by brilliant professors. This was the advanced seminar in Portrait of a Lady and the Victorian Novel that I never had and I loved every minutes of it.
I read several really good books last year but this was my favorite. I must confess that I approached it with some hesitation. It was a book about Henry James written by a college professor. Would it be too dense? Would I struggle to get through? My fears vanished on page one. It is a beautifully written book and I loved every page.
The heart of the Gorra’s book is an analysis of James’ Portrait of a Lady which he stretches out over the course of the book. That in and of itself would have been enough as it is an exquisite story that he elucidates by highlighting subtle references to James’ other works and parallels to his life. But through the analysis he has inserted chapters on James’ travels, his family and friendships, his peers such as Eliot and Turgenev, a history of publishing in the Victorian age, a short biography, and an analysis of how James’ work makes the transition from plot based novels of Dickens and Eliot to the character focused works of Proust and Virginia Woolfe. Gorra has woven it together seamlessly and for anyone who loves the 19th century English novel it is an enchanting read.
I sometimes look back wistfully and think that I should have been an English major. All those wonderful books to read followed by scintillating lectures by brilliant professors. This was the advanced seminar in Portrait of a Lady and the Victorian Novel that I never had and I loved every minutes of it.
April 15, 2014
Personally, I wouldn't read this before reading the James novel it discusses in order to avoid spoilers. Gorra's work somehow manages to be both an in-depth examination of TPOAL and a biography of James. While this book sags a little in the centre, it otherwise moves at a brisk pace and manages to be critical without getting bogged down in overly-academic jargon. Particularly compelling is Gorra's examination of the differences between the 1881 and New York editions of TPOAL and his nuanced understanding of the depth that James' later revisions added to the novel. Gorra also makes excellent observations about the thematic links of the James oeuvre, leaving me with not only a better understanding of TPOAL and James' life/working habits but his body of work as whole. If you're not that into Henry James, this book will probably prove a bit dry; for a James fan like myself, it's riveting stuff and I highly recommend it.
February 12, 2013
This was a book of highs and lows for me. There were parts I enjoyed and parts where I was thinking, really, I have to read more? At times it felt more like a lecture than a good read, but it really managed to highlight the complexity of James. I'd won this from the Goodreads First Reads Program and I thought this was going to make me regret entering, but there was a subtle flow to this book that eventually pulled me into its gentle but complex eddy. To be honest, it felt like it could have been shorter, but who am I to say, perhaps it needed to be longer. At any rate, it is a stocky, but at times dry exposure to Mr. James. I'm glad someone is paying attention to that fascinating, but often overlooked author.
September 23, 2012
Interesting and unique way of looking at a writer and a masterwork. I am finding it very hard to describe but if you love James, and especially if you love Portrait of a Lady (one of my cats was named after Isabel Archer), you should read this. I feel like I will read it so much better when I decide to re-read it.
August 6, 2013
Such a fun read! Although I knew most of what Gorra was writing about already, it was still a page turner. I love how Gorra enters into the text himself, engaging the novel and visiting the places where James lived. The idea of writing a biography of a novel is inspired. Glad to know it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer.
August 20, 2013
Absolutely wonderful. For those who long to but are not able to "tackle" Henry James this is key. Gorra intertwines James' own life with the writing of his portrait of Isabel Archer. I would go back and forth to the novel itself. And just as James was a master at his craft, so is Gorra.
August 9, 2024
If you're going to read 'The Portrait of a Lady' for the first time - I recommend the 1906 revision, breaking it into the roughly 16 parts of the original serialization and then reading Gorra up to where you've taken a break. A great journey is worthy of a great guide.
May 18, 2014
Good writing, clever premise.
June 5, 2018
Oh my gosh. What a triumph. Somehow I love The Portrait even more now.
July 8, 2021
Gorra pitches his book at people for whom James's Portrait of a Lady is one of the four or five essential, frequently reread American novels--perhaps alongside The Great Gatsby and As I Lay Dying, though probably not a nineteenth century work or anything present-day. His is practised, humane, intelligent criticism, for those who read biography instead, as he puts it in his Preface; who may read The New Yorker, but who have broken with the critical cutting-edge (or it has left them). The book is a back-handed biography that narrates James's 'masterpiece', cutting the retelling of this story with vignettes from James's own life, mostly highly familiar (his being captivated by Minny Temple; his perhaps culpable entertaining of Constance Fenimore Woolson's friendship and affection; his competitive companionship with the later-maturing William). The writing is lucid throughout. The judgments are wise, rather than brilliant. It's a pleasure to read, though at the end I was left wondering whether it had taught me anything.
Gorra is good on how novelists, for James, must write about social milieux that are storied and rest on histories (of manners, of material culture, of the gradual refinement of aesthetic taste). He finds 'Roman Rides', James's estimate of the effects of expatriation of the American artistic colony, more penetrating that any of his fiction up to that point. Some of the comparisons of fictional and real people are eye-opening: in endowing Isabel with fabulous wealth, Ralph is like a novelist, while in his relationship with 'Fenimore', with whom he covertly shared a holiday house, James is somewhat like the duplicitous narrator of 'The Aspern Papers'. Compared to champions of the later phase for whom James goes beyond French naturalism, Gorra places great weight on the young novelist's friendship with Turgenev and introduction to the Flaubert/Zola/Daudet circle. In his conception of the heroine of his first major work, and in the novel's twentieth century revision, he is for Gorra the chronicler of a psychological interiority new for the novel. The book is much more about matter and authorial habits of work than style, and presents a James at odds in subtle ways with the most interesting theoretically-informed commentary on James (e.g. Sharon Cameron, Ross Posnock, John Carlos Rowe) of the last two decades of the twentieth century.
Gorra is good on how novelists, for James, must write about social milieux that are storied and rest on histories (of manners, of material culture, of the gradual refinement of aesthetic taste). He finds 'Roman Rides', James's estimate of the effects of expatriation of the American artistic colony, more penetrating that any of his fiction up to that point. Some of the comparisons of fictional and real people are eye-opening: in endowing Isabel with fabulous wealth, Ralph is like a novelist, while in his relationship with 'Fenimore', with whom he covertly shared a holiday house, James is somewhat like the duplicitous narrator of 'The Aspern Papers'. Compared to champions of the later phase for whom James goes beyond French naturalism, Gorra places great weight on the young novelist's friendship with Turgenev and introduction to the Flaubert/Zola/Daudet circle. In his conception of the heroine of his first major work, and in the novel's twentieth century revision, he is for Gorra the chronicler of a psychological interiority new for the novel. The book is much more about matter and authorial habits of work than style, and presents a James at odds in subtle ways with the most interesting theoretically-informed commentary on James (e.g. Sharon Cameron, Ross Posnock, John Carlos Rowe) of the last two decades of the twentieth century.
March 21, 2022
A highly entertaining and instructive cross between biography, literary criticism and travelogue. Michael Gorra tells us just about everything that went into Henry James’ masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady, and adds a lot more just for the fun of it. Why did George Elliot’s husband throw himself out of his hotel window into Venice’s Grand Canal on their honeymoon? What does this have to do with Portrait of a Lady? Gorra gives us the low down on this and much more. It’s refreshing to read the sort of literary criticism that’s focused on explaining what the novelist was trying to achieve rather than how ideologically unsound he was and how much post-modernist jargon the critic can throw at the reader. Gorra retraces James’s footsteps in America, Italy, France and England and suggests probable real-life models for some of the characters and settings for the novel. He also provides a convincing argument for the superiority of the 1906 revision of the novel over the original version of 1881. Well it convinced me. I was inspired by this book to reread the novel for the third time. After that, I might just be off to Italy.
September 3, 2020
This is such a tremendous account of both an incredible author and one of the most accomplished novels in all of literature. “The Portrait of a Lady” is one of my all time favorite novels. I reread it simultaneously with this book which was such a great way to enjoy the fiction but to analyze it too. Gorra’s writing is nearly as vivid and remarkable as James’s. He almost effortlessly weaves together the biographical timeline of James’s life, his words and being as both a successful and struggling writer, key pieces of The Portrait’s most important and impressive prose, and literary analyses both historical and contemporary. I gained such a great deal of understanding of and greater appreciation for both author and novel. I think I’ve ever read such a captivating biography/literary analysis. It’s truly masterful, and I can see why it was nominated for the Pulitzer. I don’t think I have any biographies on my Best/Favorite Books of All Time list. This will be the first.
November 18, 2024
lovely look at the author’s life as it pertains to the first and revised editions of TPOAL
If you’re a Henry James fan and interested in the development of the man into the author of the three late novels and how they relate to his most loved novel, the Portrait of a Lady, you’ll get a lot from this book. It sets out events in HJ’s life as he undertook the writing of the Portrait around 1880 and looks at the changes in his personality as well as in the conventions of the English novel and in publishing that intervened between the serial publication of that first edition and the publication of the heavily revised New York edition 25 years later. Maybe if you’ve already read a biography of the author, there won’t be enough new material for you, but if, like me, you’re a fan of the Portrait and of the last novels, then this is a lovely way to gain a greater understanding of the author and the development of his literary style.
If you’re a Henry James fan and interested in the development of the man into the author of the three late novels and how they relate to his most loved novel, the Portrait of a Lady, you’ll get a lot from this book. It sets out events in HJ’s life as he undertook the writing of the Portrait around 1880 and looks at the changes in his personality as well as in the conventions of the English novel and in publishing that intervened between the serial publication of that first edition and the publication of the heavily revised New York edition 25 years later. Maybe if you’ve already read a biography of the author, there won’t be enough new material for you, but if, like me, you’re a fan of the Portrait and of the last novels, then this is a lovely way to gain a greater understanding of the author and the development of his literary style.
July 27, 2021
By no means a conventional biography, this is one of the most finely-written biographical works I have read. Michael Gorra is thorough in his research, analytical in his thinking, intellectually robust, insightful -- and a damn good writer, plain and simple. This book is like reading a love letter. No, it's like a brilliant and effusive friend sitting you down at the dinner table to share with great detail and passion his enthusiasm for his favorite novel and the author who wrote it. Even if you don't feel the same way, it's a joy to be in the presence of someone so impassioned and who reveals why with such dizzying heart and intellect.
January 27, 2021
Beautiful personal journey of describing James his life and above all, ‘Portrait of a lady’
I read it alongside my second reading of the Portrait and it certainly enriched it.
In my opinion this is the perfect book when one is already under James’ spell and has already a biography
One of my next books is a Faulkner novel and I will certainly read M. Gorra alongside it
I read it alongside my second reading of the Portrait and it certainly enriched it.
In my opinion this is the perfect book when one is already under James’ spell and has already a biography
One of my next books is a Faulkner novel and I will certainly read M. Gorra alongside it
June 17, 2018
Wonderful insights
A combination of biography and literary analysis. This work has inspired a revisit to James' novel by way of a wonderful reading on Librivox.com. I have not so enjoyed a reading experience in many a moon and I never before so appreciated James' novel.
A combination of biography and literary analysis. This work has inspired a revisit to James' novel by way of a wonderful reading on Librivox.com. I have not so enjoyed a reading experience in many a moon and I never before so appreciated James' novel.
September 16, 2018
One of the best works of literary history I've read. Of course, this is best read in companion to James's Portrait of a Lady. I recommend highly to anyone interested in Henry James, the history of the novel or Victorian literature at the close of the century. Exceptional.
October 20, 2021
This is a glorious book for those of us who love Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, or even just serious fiction. I read Gorra’s wonderful study as it if it were a novel. It’s a book I wish I had written. Bravo.
July 4, 2020
I really enjoyed this book and found it very illuminating about both James and his most famous novel, in particular about the central character Isabel Archer.
February 14, 2021
Michael Gorra work on Henry James is second to none. With this book he gives a tremendous insight into James life and how it influenced one of his many masterpieces "Portrait of a Lady"
March 26, 2025
Maybe 4.5 wasn’t enough for Portrait of a Lady.
May 5, 2014
If the mind you want to talk about Henry with is away, there's nothing to do except read your way into the conversation:
"From the preface to Roderick Hudson: "Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw...the circle within which they shall appear to happily do so. Human life spills out of form, and another episode is always possible. The novelist needs to acknowledge that and yet also to ignore it, and one of the ways James draws his circle is by drawing a circle in fact. The book returns to where it began -- the same house, the same people, even the same bench -- and that proto-modernist patterning offers a reassuring sense of wholeness, like the couplet at the end of a sonnet. It helps us accept that jagged stump of a last page.
[...] We want [Isabel Archer] to go on -- but let me borrow his words once more, and offer you last sentence of the preface he wrote for her: "There really is too much to say." (Gorra, 334/338)
Gorra does fine when he is quoting Henry and these interpretations are sweet....but they only amount to two or three chapters. The rest is researched imagination (Henry looking out windows in Rye with physical details cribbed from a diary entry). You'll find everything you need or want with James Wood, as usual:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n19/james-wo... *
(* even the LETTER response about a teenage girl reading screen is incredible)
"I first read The Portrait of a Lady at the age of 17, in school, as one of the set texts for A-level English. There were novels that excited me more, for extra-literary reasons, or spoke more intensely to some aspect of my development, there were contemporary novels that were great just because they were contemporary, but there was no novel that seemed to inhabit so deeply its themes, no novel so committed to the ceaseless incision of intelligent sensibility, no novel as linguistically alert. It is the one novel about which I most regularly feel – as now – that I have failed to describe the totality, the coverage of its intelligence. When I think ideally of ‘the novel’, this is the one I recur to. One of the many pleasures of Michael Gorra’s book is that he too has loved this novel since he studied it in college, and wants to share his passion for it. He has also taught it for many years, at Smith College, and he has written the kind of patient, sensitive, acute study that gifted teachers should write but rarely do.
[...]
What makes The Portrait of a Lady such a strange book is its strongly felt attraction towards sex and its strongly felt recoil from it. Osmond’s seductive diabolism is surely, in large part, erotic. The very structure of the novel is sickly and voyeuristic; a group of gazers, each with an erotic interest in her, circulates around Isabel. If you were to read the plot through the pornographic optic that it seems almost to dare, you would notice that some of them, like Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton, imagine themselves with her. Others, like Madame Merle and Henrietta, would like to watch her with someone else (Madame Merle wants to watch Osmond and Isabel, Henrietta wants to watch Caspar and Isabel).
The book is most subtle when most terrifying. I have always thought Gilbert Osmond the most frightening character in fiction. Osmond and Madame Merle, who were once lovers (Pansy is their daughter), and who arrange to ruin Isabel’s life, are frightening not because they are erotic conspirators out of Les Liaisons dangereuses or Clarissa. We are afraid of them because they know themselves so well, and are such adepts in self-hatred."
And on and on. It's a great essay. Read it instead.
"From the preface to Roderick Hudson: "Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw...the circle within which they shall appear to happily do so. Human life spills out of form, and another episode is always possible. The novelist needs to acknowledge that and yet also to ignore it, and one of the ways James draws his circle is by drawing a circle in fact. The book returns to where it began -- the same house, the same people, even the same bench -- and that proto-modernist patterning offers a reassuring sense of wholeness, like the couplet at the end of a sonnet. It helps us accept that jagged stump of a last page.
[...] We want [Isabel Archer] to go on -- but let me borrow his words once more, and offer you last sentence of the preface he wrote for her: "There really is too much to say." (Gorra, 334/338)
Gorra does fine when he is quoting Henry and these interpretations are sweet....but they only amount to two or three chapters. The rest is researched imagination (Henry looking out windows in Rye with physical details cribbed from a diary entry). You'll find everything you need or want with James Wood, as usual:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n19/james-wo... *
(* even the LETTER response about a teenage girl reading screen is incredible)
"I first read The Portrait of a Lady at the age of 17, in school, as one of the set texts for A-level English. There were novels that excited me more, for extra-literary reasons, or spoke more intensely to some aspect of my development, there were contemporary novels that were great just because they were contemporary, but there was no novel that seemed to inhabit so deeply its themes, no novel so committed to the ceaseless incision of intelligent sensibility, no novel as linguistically alert. It is the one novel about which I most regularly feel – as now – that I have failed to describe the totality, the coverage of its intelligence. When I think ideally of ‘the novel’, this is the one I recur to. One of the many pleasures of Michael Gorra’s book is that he too has loved this novel since he studied it in college, and wants to share his passion for it. He has also taught it for many years, at Smith College, and he has written the kind of patient, sensitive, acute study that gifted teachers should write but rarely do.
[...]
What makes The Portrait of a Lady such a strange book is its strongly felt attraction towards sex and its strongly felt recoil from it. Osmond’s seductive diabolism is surely, in large part, erotic. The very structure of the novel is sickly and voyeuristic; a group of gazers, each with an erotic interest in her, circulates around Isabel. If you were to read the plot through the pornographic optic that it seems almost to dare, you would notice that some of them, like Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton, imagine themselves with her. Others, like Madame Merle and Henrietta, would like to watch her with someone else (Madame Merle wants to watch Osmond and Isabel, Henrietta wants to watch Caspar and Isabel).
The book is most subtle when most terrifying. I have always thought Gilbert Osmond the most frightening character in fiction. Osmond and Madame Merle, who were once lovers (Pansy is their daughter), and who arrange to ruin Isabel’s life, are frightening not because they are erotic conspirators out of Les Liaisons dangereuses or Clarissa. We are afraid of them because they know themselves so well, and are such adepts in self-hatred."
And on and on. It's a great essay. Read it instead.
December 5, 2013
Anyone who hasn't read Henry James and wants to know which book to start with, should pick Portrait of a Lady. It's widely considered James's most perfect book, and a masterpiece of Victorian literature -- or any literature. And that's true. But after you read Portrait, I would suggest you read Michael Gorra's superb "biography" of the book, Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece. That subtitle is key, because this is not just a book about Portrait of a Lady. It's a psychological and literary biography of James himself -- of the personal history, the choices, and the larger social and historical context that made him the writer he became.
It's difficult for me to write about Henry James without gushing. I admire him so much -- both as a writer and as a man. He's the writer of that era I most love, and his prolific bibliography gives anyone who wants to learn more about him a rich mine to explore. This book made me realize how much about his life I *didn't* know, and gave me tremendous insight into the parts of his life that I did.
The edition of Portrait that I read was his original 1881 version. At the time I read it, I didn't even know there *was* any other version. One of the things I learned from Gorra's book is that James revised all of his novels, and wrote new Prefaces for them. The complete set, called the New York Edition, came out in 1908. The changes James made to Portrait of a Lady were significant, and one of the things Gorra does is analyze how and why James made the changes, and the difference it makes to the novel.
Gorra also pays a lot of attention to James's relationships with other well-known writers of the time. His literary friendships and influences included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ivan Turgenev, Gustave Flaubert, George Eliot, and Edith Wharton -- with the last mentioned of whom he had a particularly rich and close friendship. Along the way, he had a number of other important relationships with writers and other artists who are not as widely remembered or known today. And of course there was James's own family. His older brother was William James, whose influence on the fields of psychology and philosophy are incalculable, and Henry's relations with, among others, William, his sister Alice, and his cousin Minny Temple, strongly influenced both his life and his writing.
One of the most seminal influences on Henry James was his own largely unacknowledged homosexuality. It had a deep effect on his life and his writing. This is something I already knew -- i.e., that James was probably homosexual -- but Gorra writes extensively about it, and with immense perception, sensitivity, and compassion. He enhanced my understanding of and insight into James's personal struggle immeasurably.
It's difficult for me to write about Henry James without gushing. I admire him so much -- both as a writer and as a man. He's the writer of that era I most love, and his prolific bibliography gives anyone who wants to learn more about him a rich mine to explore. This book made me realize how much about his life I *didn't* know, and gave me tremendous insight into the parts of his life that I did.
The edition of Portrait that I read was his original 1881 version. At the time I read it, I didn't even know there *was* any other version. One of the things I learned from Gorra's book is that James revised all of his novels, and wrote new Prefaces for them. The complete set, called the New York Edition, came out in 1908. The changes James made to Portrait of a Lady were significant, and one of the things Gorra does is analyze how and why James made the changes, and the difference it makes to the novel.
Gorra also pays a lot of attention to James's relationships with other well-known writers of the time. His literary friendships and influences included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ivan Turgenev, Gustave Flaubert, George Eliot, and Edith Wharton -- with the last mentioned of whom he had a particularly rich and close friendship. Along the way, he had a number of other important relationships with writers and other artists who are not as widely remembered or known today. And of course there was James's own family. His older brother was William James, whose influence on the fields of psychology and philosophy are incalculable, and Henry's relations with, among others, William, his sister Alice, and his cousin Minny Temple, strongly influenced both his life and his writing.
One of the most seminal influences on Henry James was his own largely unacknowledged homosexuality. It had a deep effect on his life and his writing. This is something I already knew -- i.e., that James was probably homosexual -- but Gorra writes extensively about it, and with immense perception, sensitivity, and compassion. He enhanced my understanding of and insight into James's personal struggle immeasurably.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews