A young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncles 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.
The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories
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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 ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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 ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
The famous and terrifying story in an edition which includes a unique selection of Henry James's ghost stories
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
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THE STATEMENT appears to have been written, though the fragment is undated, long after the death of his wife, whom I take to have been one of the persons referred to. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
THE STATEMENT appears to have been written, though the fragment is undated, long after the death of his wife, whom I take to have been one of the persons referred to. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By Roman Clodia
TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
Unlike some of the other reviewers here I still think this is the creepiest book I've ever read, and all the more terrifying for the fact that James never articulates what's going on - he simply leaves your imagination to float free and conjure up all your worse nightmares. Yes, he's never an easy read (though this is far more accessible than Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl etc) but I think his very stately, mannered sentences and diction actually add to the horror of the story. Don't read this if you're expecting Stephen King or The Exorcist - James expects his readers to make the effort to read properly. Someone called this (possibly James himself?)'the most poisonous little tale I could imagine' and I think that's a perfect description - when I re-read it, it was on the tube with bright lights and lots of people around as I couldn't face reading it at home alone!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By pip
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Only just started to read the story but it feels chilling. The speed which you can get the books from kindle is brilliant.
7 of 16 people found the following review helpful
By Luc REYNAERT
Format:Paperback
Henry James is a prime aristocrat, a not always very subtle defender of the leisure class. Two short stories in this bundle show it profusely.
In `The Turn of the Screw', two aristocratic children are haunted by two `base menials' (`You reminded him that Quint was only a base menial?'). Henry James fears really that the higher classes will be contaminated and corrupted by the lower classes: `I should continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who minister to superstition and fears.'
The evil comes out of the lower classes, `For the love of all the evil that the pair (of servants) put into them.'
At the end, one of the children succumbs to the same fate as the child in `Erlkoenig' by Goethe, Erlkoenig being the quintessence of the evil force, the killer of innocence.
In `Owen Wingrave' (masterly transformed into an opera by Benjamin Britten), the main character refuses to step into the tradition of his ancestors and to become a soldier (and die on the battlefield). On the contrary, he calls war an overwhelming stupidity, the `crash barbarism'. He doesn't understand `why nations don't tear to pieces the governments, the rulers that go for them.'
For Henry James, the ideas and the behavior of Owen Wingrave are like `falling in love with a low girl.'
At the end, Owen is slain by the ghost of one of his ancestors, dying on his own battlefield (for his ideas). The last words of the story (`gained field') would mean that the aristocracy has adopted the `anti-war' policy.
These perfectly constructed and brilliantly written stories reveal Henry James's real obsession: preserve the `purity' of his kind.
In `The Turn of the Screw', two aristocratic children are haunted by two `base menials' (`You reminded him that Quint was only a base menial?'). Henry James fears really that the higher classes will be contaminated and corrupted by the lower classes: `I should continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who minister to superstition and fears.'
The evil comes out of the lower classes, `For the love of all the evil that the pair (of servants) put into them.'
At the end, one of the children succumbs to the same fate as the child in `Erlkoenig' by Goethe, Erlkoenig being the quintessence of the evil force, the killer of innocence.
In `Owen Wingrave' (masterly transformed into an opera by Benjamin Britten), the main character refuses to step into the tradition of his ancestors and to become a soldier (and die on the battlefield). On the contrary, he calls war an overwhelming stupidity, the `crash barbarism'. He doesn't understand `why nations don't tear to pieces the governments, the rulers that go for them.'
For Henry James, the ideas and the behavior of Owen Wingrave are like `falling in love with a low girl.'
At the end, Owen is slain by the ghost of one of his ancestors, dying on his own battlefield (for his ideas). The last words of the story (`gained field') would mean that the aristocracy has adopted the `anti-war' policy.
These perfectly constructed and brilliantly written stories reveal Henry James's real obsession: preserve the `purity' of his kind.
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