Sign in
Books
Kids
Popular
Authors & Events
Gifts & Deals
Audio
Sign In
Look Inside
Feb 12, 2002 | ISBN 9780375759192 Buy
Oct 01, 1983 | ISBN 9780553211276 Buy *This format is not eligible to earn points towards the Reader Rewards program
Nov 26, 1991 | ISBN 9780679405627 Buy
Jun 26, 2007 | ISBN 9780553903973 Buy
Also available from:
Available from:
Feb 12, 2002 | ISBN 9780375759192
Oct 01, 1983 | ISBN 9780553211276
Nov 26, 1991 | ISBN 9780679405627
Jun 26, 2007 | ISBN 9780553903973
One of the great heroines of American literature, Isabel Archer, journeys to Europe in order to, as Henry James writes in his 1908 Preface, “affront her destiny.” James began The Portrait of a Lady without a plot or subject, only the slim but provocative notion of a young woman taking control of her fate. The result is a richly imagined study of an American heiress who turns away her suitors in an effort to first establish—and then protect—her independence. But Isabel’s pursuit of spiritual freedom collapses when she meets the captivating Gilbert Osmond. “James’s formidable powers of observation, his stance as a kind of bachelor recorder of human doings in which he is not involved,” writes Hortense Calisher, “make him a first-class documentarian, joining him to that great body of storytellers who amass what formal history cannot.”
Capturing the grandeur of a gracious, splendid Europe of wealth and Old World sensibilities, this glorious, complex novel has become a touchstone for a great writer’s entire literary achievement. From the opening pages, when the high-spirited American girl Isabel Archer arrives at the English manor Gardencourt, James’s luminous, superbly crafted prose creates an atmosphere of intensity, expectation, and incomparable beauty. Isabel, who has been taken abroad by an eccentric aunt to fulfill her potential, attracts the passions of a British aristocrat and a brash American, as well as the secret adoration of her invalid cousin, Ralph Touchett. But her vulnerability and innocence lead her not to love but to a fatal entrapment in intrigue, deception, and betrayal. This brilliant interior drama of the forming of a woman’s consciousness makes The Portrait of a Lady a masterpiece of James’s middle years.
Isabel Archer, a beautiful, intelligent, and headstrong American girl newly endowed with wealth and embarked in Europe on a treacherous journey to self-knowledge, is delineated with a magnificence that is at once casual and tense with force and insight. The characters with whom she is entangled–the good man and the evil one, between whom she wavers, and the mysterious witchlike woman with whom she must do battle–are each rendered with a virtuosity that suggests dazzling imaginative powers. And the scene painting–in England and Italy–provides a continuous visual pleasure while always remaining crucial to the larger drama.The Portrait of a Lady is the most stunning achievement of Henry James’s early period–in the 1860s and ’70s when he was transforming himself from a talented young American into a resident of Europe, a citizen of the world, and one of the greatest novelists of modern times. A kind of delight at the success of this transformation informs every page of this masterpiece.
Henry James was born on April 15, 1843, on Washington Place in New York to the most intellectually remarkable of American families. His father, Henry James Sr., was a brilliant and eccentric religious philosopher; his brother was one of the… More about Henry James
“The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world.”—Rebecca West
Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network
Stay in Touch
By clicking Sign Up, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Penguin Random House's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
