The American (Penguin Popular Classics)

by HenryJames (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1995

  $3.25

  A novel, first published in 1877, which follows a wealthy American gentleman who falls in love with a widow of noble birth whilst on a trip to Paris, unaware of the troubles that lie ahead of him. From the author of THE WINGS OF A DOVE, THE TURN OF THE SCREW, BOSTONIANS and THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $23.09

  'You you a nun; you with your beauty defaced and your nature wasted you behind locks and bars! Never, never, if I can prevent it!' A wealthy American man of business descends on Europe in search of a wife to make his fortune complete. In Paris Christopher Newman is introduced to Claire de Cintre, daughter of the ancient House of Bellegarde, and to Valentin, her charming young brother. His bid for Claire's hand receives an icy welcome from the heads of the family, an elder brother and their formidable mother, the old Marquise. Can they stomach his manners for the sake of his dollars? Out of this classic collision between the old world and the new, James weaves a fable of thwarted desire that shifts between comedy, tragedy, romance and melodrama a fable which in the later version printed here takes on some of the subtleties associated with this greatest novels.

• New

  Paperback
  1991

  $11.03

  Henry James's third novel is an exploration of his most powerful, perennial theme - the clash between European and American cultures, the Old World and the New. Christopher Newman, a 'self-made' American millionaire in France, falls in love with the beautiful aristocratic Claire de Bellegarde. Her family, however, taken aback by his brash American manner, rejects his proposal of marriage. When Newman discovers a guilty secret in the Bellegardes' past, he confronts a moral dilemma: Should he expose them and thus gain his revenge? James's masterly early work is at once a social comedy, a melodramatic romance and a realistic novel of manners.