The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories

by Henry James, T. J. Lustig (Editor)

Overview

A young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncle at his grand country house. She sees the figure of an unknown man on the tower and his face at the window. It is Peter Quint, the master's dissolute valet, and he has come for little Miles. But Peter Quint is dead. Like the other tales collected here - 'Sir Edmund Orme', 'Owen Wingrave', and 'The Friends of the Friends' - 'The Turn of the Screw' is to all immediate appearances a ghost story. But are the appearances what they seem? Is what appears to the governess a ghost or a hallucination? Who else sees what she sees? The reader may wonder whether the children are victims of corruption from beyond the grave, or victims of the governess's 'infernal imagination', which torments but also entrals her? 'The Turn of the Screw' is probably the most famous, certainly the most eerily equivocal, of all ghostly tales. Is it a subtle, self-conscious exploration of the haunted house of Victorian culture, filled with echoes of sexual and social unease? Or is it simply, 'the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read'? The texts are those of the New York Edition, with a new Introduction and Notes. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192669216
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	04/17/2008
Series:	Oxford World's Classics Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Kimberly C. Reed is Professor of English at Lipscomb University and the co-editor with Peter C. Beidler of Approaches to Teaching Henry James’s Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (MLA, 2005).

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

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Henry James: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Texts

Tales

• “The Altar of the Dead”
  “The Beast in the Jungle”
  “The Jolly Corner”

The Turn of the Screw

Appendix A: The Ghostly Tales: Inspiration and Reception

1. From Henry James, A Small Boy and Others (1913)
2. From Henry James Sr., Society the Redeemed Form of Man (1879)
3. From William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1929)
4. From Henry James, Letter to Mary Walsh James (26 March 1870)
5. From Henry James, Notes of a Son and Brother (1914)
6. From Henry James, The American Scene (1907)
7. From Henry James, Letter to Frederick A. Duneka (28 August 1906)
8. From Henry James’s Notebooks (1904–05)
9. Contemporary Reviews of “The Altar of the Dead”
1. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (May 1896)
2. William Dean Howells, Harper’s Weekly (27 July 1896)
10. Contemporary Reviews of The Turn of the Screw
1. Oscar Wilde, Letter to Robert Boss ([?]12 January 1899)
2. From Literature (15 October 1898)
3. From “Mr. James’s New Stories,” Athenaeum (22 October 1898)
4. From “Henry James as a Ghost Raiser,” Life (10 November 1898)
5. From Illustrated London News (3 December 1898)

Appendix B: The Study of the Supernatural in Nineteenth-Century England and America

1. From William James, “Certain Phenomena of Trance” (1890)
2. From The Times (28 December 1898)
3. From Catherine S. Crowe, The Night-Side of Nature or Ghosts and Ghost Seers (1848)
4. From William T. Stead, Real Ghost Stories (1897)

Appendix C: Excerpts from Henry James’s Nonfiction Writing about the Supernatural

1. From Henry James, “Is There Life After Death?” (1910)
2. Henry James’s Review of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1888)
3. From Henry James’s Prefaces to the Tales (1906–08)
1. From the Preface to The Turn of the Screw
2. From the Preface to “The Altar of the Dead,” “The Beast in the Jungle,” and “The Jolly Corner”
4. From Henry James’s Notebooks (1879–1914)

Appendix D: Other Writers and Artists on James

1. From Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934)
2. From T.S. Eliot, “On Henry James” (1918)
3. From Virginia Woolf, “Henry James’s Ghost Stories” (1921)
4. Charles Demuth’s Illustrations for “The Beast in the Jungle”
5. Max Beerbohm on James’s Return to the United States (1904)

Select Bibliography and Filmography

Editorial Reviews

There are many ‘critical’ or ‘teaching’ editions of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Kimberly C. Reed’s edition distinguishes itself by including with James’s novella other stories and various contemporary documents that highlight James’s fictional treatment of the supernatural and the cultural context for it. As a result, this new Broadview Edition isn’t just a random sample of someone’s favorite James short fictions. Instead, it provides in one accessible package much of the material needed to examine deeply one important aspect of James’s oeuvre.” — Pierre A. Walker, Salem State College, Co-General Editor of The Complete Letters of Henry James (University of Nebraska Press, 2006)

“Kimberly C. Reed’s excellent new edition, attractive to scholars yet accessible to students, places four ghostly tales in a rich historical context of letters, autobiographies, critical writings, and other invaluable documents. She invites readers to create connections with James’s life, the intellectual milieu of the James family, and the body of fictional and non-fictional works by James that speak most powerfully to these tales. Her account of the roots of the ghostly in magic and religion and its reverberations in deconstruction and psychoanalysis is especially illuminating, and demonstrates why this collection will be important to many in literary studies and beyond.” — Sheila Teahan, Michigan State University

From the Publisher