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Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece

Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece

by Michael Gorra (Author)

  • New

    Illustrated 2013

    $26.43
Synopsis

Henry James (1843-1916) has had many biographers but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the modern novel, combining elements of biography, criticism and travelogue in re-creating the dramatic backstory of James's masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady (1881). Gorra shows how this scandalous story came to be written. Travelling to Italy, France and England, he sheds new light on James's family, the European literary circles of George Eliot, Flaubert and Turgenev in which James made his name, and the psychological forces that enabled him to create the most memorable female protagonist. A piercing detective story, Portrait of a Novel provides a brilliant account of the greatest American novel of expatriate life ever written.

$26.43

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Illustrated
 Pages: 416
 Edition: Illustrated
 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
Published: 09 Aug 2013
ISBN 10: 0871406705
ISBN 13: 9780871406705

Media Reviews
...he [Gorra] has written the kind of patient, sensitive, acute study that gifted teachers should write but rarely do. -- London Review of Books
Michael Gorra...has pulled off an astounding feat...in this impressive study...Gorra goes anywhere that strikes his fancy, and the result is splendid: a book to reread in years to come, a model for what criticism can do when happily married to biography. -- Literary Review
Author Bio
Michael Gorra teaches English at Smith College. His books include After Empire, The Bells in Their Silence, and, as editor, the Norton Critical Edition of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.