Novels 1871–1880: Watch and Ward / Roderick Hudson / The Americans / The Europeans / Confidence

By Henry James

Book Overview

Here is an immensely engaging introduction to one of the great novelists of our own or any country, the first volume in the Library of America edition of Henry James's complete works. James's first... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0940450135
• ISBN13: 9780940450134
• Release Date: November 1983
• Publisher: Library of America
• Length: 1312 Pages
• Weight: 1.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.2" x 8.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Great Story Teller

I first read these novels more than twenty years ago and I look forward to reading them again. James' early novels and stories are very entertaining and easy to read. He was great story teller and during this period his writing was not so dense as it would later become.

Some great early novels by Henry James

This book has five complete novels for one comparatively low price! "Watch and Ward," is a novel that James himself preferred to ignore as a youthful indiscretion, but I found it a vastly entertaining and suspenseful love story. Roderick Hudson is a compelling cautionary tale. The American is a gripping story that cries out for a movie version (in my fantasy Peter Weir would direct, and it might star Tom Cruise and Winona Ryder, although I'm sure many others would do just as well). This novel has love, a duel, a frightful skeleton in the closet, blackmail, Carmelite nuns, etc. The ending should be adjusted along the lines of the play version that James later wrote. The Europeans did not grab me, but Confidence is a delightful novel with something James later tended to avoid--a happy ending. This collection provides a lot of great novelistic entertainment for the buck. The way the Library of America does it is that for one they are non-profit, and second they use top quality thin acid-free paper, which allows them to fit five books into the space of something slightly larger than one thick paperback. The book even has a silky little bookmark to hold your place. Classy!