The Lesson of the Master

by Henry James

Overview

The Lesson of the Master is a novella written by Henry James, originally published in 1888. The novella tells the story of a young writer, Paul Overt, who meets Henry St. George, a famous novelist Overt admires. During that time, Overt also meets and falls in love with Marian Fancourt, a young woman who admires both St. George's and Overt's work. During their meetings, St. George, who is married, advises Overt against getting married and having children, arguing that a wife and children will be the death of Overt's creativity and career. Overt then takes an extended vacation in which he considers St. George's advice. When he returns, he learns that St. George's wife had died, and that St. George had taken Marian Fancourt as his wife. Overt feels that St. George had set him up in order to have Miss Fancourt for himself, but St. George insists that by marrying her, he saved Overt and his career. (Wikipedia)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783962729097
Publisher:	Otbebookpublishing
Publication date:	01/13/2019
Series:	Classics To Go
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	67
File size:	530 KB

About the Author

Henry James, OM (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American-British author regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of renowned philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for a number of novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between emigre Americans, English people, and continental Europeans – examples of such novels include The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often made use of a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to impressionist painting. (Wikipedia)

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

Editorial Reviews

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—Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer

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—Time Out London

"[F]irst-rate…astutely selected and attractively packaged…indisputably great works."
—Adam Begley, The New York Observer

"I’ve always been haunted by Bartleby, the proto-slacker. But it’s the handsomely minimalist cover of the Melville House edition that gets me here, one of many in the small publisher’s fine 'Art of the Novella' series."
—The New Yorker

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—KQED (NPR San Francisco)

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—The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher