A young governess is employed to look after two orphaned children in a grand country house. Isolated and inexperienced, she is at first charmed by her young charges but gradually she suspects that they may not be as innocent as they seem. And do the sinister figures that she sees at the window exist only in her imagination or are they ghosts intent on a terrible and devastating task? The Turn of the Screw is one of the most famous and eerily equivocal ghost stories ever written.
Owen Wingrave is the story of the son of a long line of military heroes who refuses to follow tradition, yet proves his bravery in a haunted room.
My counselor couldn't read! I winced at my mistake, which I attenuated as I could, and opened my letter again to repeat it to her; then, faltering in the act and folding it up once more, I put it back...
Henry James was born in New York in 1843 and was educated in Europe and America. He left Harvard Law School in 1863, after a year's attendance, to concentrate on writing, and from 1869 he began to make prolonged visits to Europe, eventually settling in England in 1876. His literary output was prodigious and of the highest quality: more than ten outstanding novels, including The Portrait of a Lady and The American; countless novellas and short stories; as well as innumerable essays, letters, and other pieces of critical prose. Known by contemporary fellow novelists as 'the Master', James died in Kensington, London, in 1916.