The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories - Softcover

James, Henry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199536171 ISBN 13: 9780199536177

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

A young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncle at his grand country house. She sees the figure of an unknown man on the tower and his face at the window. It is Peter Quint, the master's dissolute valet, and he has come for little Miles. But Peter Quint is dead.

Like the other tales collected here - `Sir Edmund Orme', `Owen Wingrave', and `The Friends of the Friends' - `The Turn of the Screw' is to all immediate appearances a ghost story. But are the appearances what they seem? Is what appears to the governess a ghost or a hallucination? Who else sees what she sees? The reader may wonder whether the children are victims of corruption from beyond the grave, or victims of the governess's `infernal imagination', which torments but also entrals her?

`The Turn of the Screw' is probably the most famous, certainly the most eerily equivocal, of all ghostly tales. Is it a subtle, self-conscious exploration of the haunted house of Victorian culture, filled with echoes of sexual and social unease? Or is it simply, `the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read'?

The texts are those of the New York Edition, with a new Introduction and Notes.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

About this title

Review

"A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale" (Oscar Wilde)

"It really does turn your blood cold" (Colm Tóibín)

"Technically, he is extraordinarily brilliant, and stylistically he's wonderful" (David Lodge)

"Henry James is as solitary in the history of the novel as Shakespeare is in the history of poetry" (Graham Greene)

"[James] is the most intelligent man of his generation" (T. S. Eliot)

Book Description

The famous and terrifying story in an edition which includes a unique selection of Henry James's ghost stories

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199536171
• ISBN 13: 9780199536177
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Lustig T. J.