The Ambassadors

by Henry James

Overview

Henry James' 1903 book "The Ambassadors" was first released as a serial in the North American Review (NAR). The dark comedy book centers on Lewis Lambert Strether, the main character, as he travels to Europe to reintegrate the son of his widowed fiancée into the family company. The book is told from Strether's perspective in the third person. The novel consists of Lewis Lambert Strether (character in the novel) being sent to Paris by his fiancée to find her wayward son Chad. Strether's transition from an American to a European perspective is detailed in the book. Strether encounters Maria Gostrey, who provides him with insightful information on European culture (and the reader). Strether's personal introduction to Paris begins to widen his own head and heart to a more expansive understanding of the possibilities the world has to offer. Strether's friendship with Madame de Vionnet will be severed if Chad decides to go back to Woollett. Even for James's work, The Ambassadors' publishing history is convoluted. Before The Wings of the Dove (1902), between October 1900 and July 1901, he wrote the book, but he did not immediately find a publisher.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789357270922
Publisher:	Double 9 Booksllp
Publication date:	04/22/2022
Pages:	526
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.17(d)

About the Author

Henry James, an American-British author, was born on April 15, 1843, and died on February 28, 1916. He is well-known as a key transitional personality between literary realism and modernism. His novels dealt with the social and marital interplay between Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. Author Henry James was nominated for the Nobel Prize for English Literature. His novel, "The Turn of the Screw," is regarded as one of the most analyzed and ambiguous ghost stories in the English language. The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904) were James's three most significant novels. Henry James was the author of 20 novels, 112 tales, 12 plays, several volumes of travel and criticism, and a great deal of literary journalism. A master of prose fiction from the beginning, he practiced it as a fertile innovator, enlarged the form, and placed upon it his own stamp. The Ambassadors is the first in a series of three novels by Henry James, published between 1901 and 1914, dealing with the subject of an heiress doomed to die by illness. This novel avoids its cliché subject by focusing on the characters surrounding the unfortunate young woman.

Date of Birth:

April 15, 1843

Date of Death:

February 28, 1916

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

London, England

Education:

Attended school in France and Switzerland; Harvard Law School, 1862-63

Read an Excerpt

I
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "The Ambassadors"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Henry James.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

	Introduction	7
	Note on the Text	31
	Preface to the New York Edition	33
	The Ambassadors	53
	Notes	513

Editorial Reviews

He is as solitary in the history of the novel as Shakespeare in the history of poetry.

Graham Greene

'… the Cambridge Edition reproduces James’s fiction as it originally appeared to his contemporary book-buying public, collectively charting a half century of artistic development, stylistic invention, and cultural history. It gives readers options, and in the case of The Ambassadors the choice of the Cambridge Edition is a deeply satisfying one. … One of the Cambridge Edition's many strengths is the attention the editors pay to textual history and the historical development of James’s fiction within biographical, literary, and cultural contexts … many will agree that the Cambridge Edition is ‘quite the best, 'all round' edition …' Sarah Wadsworth, Review of English Studies

'[One of] two handsome volumes in their Cambridge maroon cloth covers with gilt stamping on the binding and James’s familiar signature on the covers are crucial additions to the resources scholars will use for generations to study the greatest novelist of the modern period.' John Carlos Rowe, The Henry James Review

'Given that the 'textual condition' of The Ambassadors (to use McGann’s phrase) is an excursion into chaos (to use James’s phrase), Nicola Bradbury should be crowned in laurels for guiding us with such precision through its various incarnations. The Cambridge edition gives us the evolution of The Ambassadors from 'dropped seed', as James called it, to full-flowering.' Frances Wilson, The Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher