The Portrait of a Lady (Oxford World's Classics)

by Henry James (Author), Nicola Bradbury (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.27

  When Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as 'a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action'. She turns aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion to follow her own path. But that way leads to disillusionment and a future as constricted as 'a dark narrow alley with a dead wall at the end'. In a conclusion that is one of the most moving in modern fiction, Isabel makes her final choice. The Portrait of a Lady is the masterpiece of James's middle period, and Isabel is perhaps his most engaging central character. This edition provides a challenging new introduction and detailed notes; the text is that of the New York Edition and includes Henry James's own Preface.

• Used

  Paperback
  1983

  $3.27

• Used

  Hardcover
  1989

  $4.51

• New

  Paperback
  2006

  $7.10

  With an Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Reading. Transplanted to Europe from her native America, Isabel Archer has candour, beauty, intelligence, an independent spirit and a marked enthusiasm for life. An unexpected inheritance apparently gives her freedom, but despite all her natural advantages she makes one disastrous error of judgement and the result is genuinely tragic. Her tale, told with James' inimitable poise, is of the widest relevance. 'The phase when his (Henry James') genius functioned with the freest and fullest vitality is represented by The Portrait of a Lady'. (F.R. LEAVIS)

• New

  Hardcover
  1991

  $15.73

  The talented and beautiful Isabel Archer, courted by several suitors and enriched by her dying uncle, chooses to marry the cold and ambitious Gilbert Osmond. The heroine soon discovers to her cost that freedom of choice is never what it seems.