The Portrait of a Lady (Baker Classics Collection) - Hardcover

James, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801012147 ISBN 13: 9780801012143

Publisher: Baker Book House, 2001

Synopsis

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.”

About this title

Book Description

The Cambridge Edition of The Portrait of a Lady (1881) offers the most authoritative and most comprehensively annotated text of Henry James's first masterpiece. Extensive textual variants provide complete collation of all published versions since its first appearance in serial form through the New York edition of 1908.

From the Publisher

Actress Nina Foch, who performs this story has played leading roles in many films that have become American classics, including Executive Suite, The Ten Commandments, An American in Paris, and Spartacus.

Edition details

• Publisher: Baker Book House
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801012147
• ISBN 13: 9780801012143
• Binding: Hardcover