The Golden Bowl: Henry James

Henry James`s highly charged study of adultery, jealousy and possession, The Golden Bowl is edited with an introduction and notes by Ruth Bernard Yeazell in Penguin Classics.

Maggie Verver, a young American heiress, and her widowed father Adam, a billionaire collector of objets d`art, lead a life of wealth and refinement in London. They are both getting married: Maggie to Prince Amerigo, an impoverished Italian aristocrat, and Adam to the beautiful but penniless Charlotte Stant, a friend of his daughter. But both father and daughter are unaware that their new conquests share a secret - one for which all concerned must pay the price. Henry James`s late, great work both continues and challenges his theme of confrontation between American innocence and European experience.

This edition of The Golden Bowl contains a chronology, suggested further reading, a glossary, notes and an introduction by Ruth Bernard Yeazall discussing James`s original conception of the novel and later changes made to its structure and characters.

Henry James (1843-1916) son of a prominent theologian, and brother to the philosopher William James, was one of the most celebrated novelists of the fin-de-siecle. In addition to many short stories, plays, books of criticism, biography and autobiography, and much travel writing, he wrote some twenty novels.
His novella `Daisy Miller` (1878) established him as a literary figure on both sides of the Atlantic, and his other novels in Penguin Classics include Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), What Maisie Knew (1897), The Awkward Age (1899), The Wings of the Dove (1902) and The Ambassadors (1903).