The Ambassadors: Introduction by Sarah Churchwell (Everyman's Library Classics Series) - Hardcover

James, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1101907827 ISBN 13: 9781101907825

Publisher: Everyman's Library, 2016

Synopsis

A new Everyman's Library hardcover edition of The Ambassadors--one of the great masterpieces of Henry James’s late period, and the author’s own favorite among his works.

First published in 1903, the novel follows middle-aged Lambert Strether as he is dispatched from Massachusetts to Paris by his wealthy fiancée to rescue her son, Chad Newsome, from the corrupting influences of Europe and its wicked women. Once the mild-mannered and inexperienced Strether arrives in Paris, however, Chad introduces him to a world that he finds refined and sophisticated, rather than debauched and base. Mrs. Newsome, waiting in Massachusetts, grows impatient and sends more ambassadors to retrieve her wayward men. But Strether has become especially enchanted by Chad’s female friends Madame de Vionnet and her daughter, Jeanne, and he begins to wonder if, all his life, he has missed out on what the wider world has to offer. “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to,” he tells a friend in one of the most memorable scenes in this darkly comic, masterfully written story of liberation, self-discovery, and the meaning of living well.

About this title

Review:

The Ambassadors, which Henry James considered his best work, is the most exquisite refinement of his favorite theme: the collision of American innocence with European experience. This time, James recounts the continental journey of Louis Lambert Strether--a fiftysomething man of the world who has been dispatched abroad by a rich widow, Mrs. Newsome. His mission: to save her son Chadwick from the clutches of a wicked (i.e., European) woman, and to convince the prodigal to return to Woollett, Massachusetts. Instead, this all-American envoy finds Europe growing on him. Strether also becomes involved in a very Jamesian "relation" with the fascinating Miss Maria Gostrey, a fellow American and informal Sacajawea to her compatriots. Clearly Paris has "improved" Chad beyond recognition, and convincing him to return to the U.S. is going to be a very, very hard sell. Suspense, of course, is hardly James's stock-in-trade. But there is no more meticulous mapper of tone and atmosphere, nuance and implication. His hyper-refined characters are at their best in dialogue, particularly when they're exchanging morsels of gossip. Astute, funny, and relentlessly intelligent, James amply fulfills his own description of the novelist as a person upon whom nothing is lost. --Rhian Ellis

Book Description:

Henry James considered his late novel The Ambassadors (1903) 'quite the best, 'all round'' of all his works. This volume based on the first book edition provides extensive annotations, a detailed textual history of the work and a full introduction exploring the novel's literary, cultural and historical contexts.

About this edition

• Publisher: Everyman's Library
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1101907827
• ISBN 13: 9781101907825
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 536