The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
- Used
- Good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Good/No Jacket
- Seller
-
Birsay, Orkney, United Kingdom
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
London: Martin Secker, 1915 A good copy of the first UK edition as a single titled volume in the original cloth binding. The binding has some faded areas at the top of the front board and the spine but it is clean and sound. The fading affects the brightness of the gilt on the front board title. There is pulling and some fraying to the spine ends and light wear to the corners. Internally it is complete and very clean. With half title stating that it is the Uniform Edition, title with note on the verso noting that the text follows that of the Definitive Edition, and text. Top page edges are gilted; remainder untrimmed. There is some spotting to the untrimmed edges and light spotting to the half title and final leaf with print details.
Synopsis
The Turn of the Screw is a short novel or a novella written by U.S. -born British author Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and film adaptation. Due to its ambiguous content and narrative skill, The Turn of the Screw became a favorite text of New Criticism. The account has lent itself to dozens of different interpretations, often mutually exclusive, including those of a Freudian nature.
Reviews
The Turn Of The Screw is a gothic novella by British author Henry James in which an inexperienced young governess, a parson's daughter, takes a position at a country house looking after two children. The master of the house, their uncle, gives her full authority, wanting no communication about the children.
Her welcome to the house by the housekeeper, Mrs Grose, is genuine, and she is immediately taken with the little girl, Flora. Her brother Miles arrives a few days later, inexplicably dismissed from his boarding school: he seems to be a delightful boy.
Things change when the unnamed governess spots first a man (who is apparently the ghost of the master's valet, Peter Quint) and then a woman, the ghost of the previous governess, Miss Jessel. From just their gaze, she discerns that these two are after the children.
She manages to drag information about them and their relationship from the reluctant Mrs Grose and, between them, they decide they have to protect the children from the harm they believe the apparitions intend. Her vigils yield more sightings of the two, and the governess is even more certain of their ill intent.
As time progresses, though, the governess begins to wonder if it is too late: the children seem to already be happily in the thrall of these two. Should she, against instructions, contact their uncle?
For a twenty-first Century reader, this classic, however well written, will likely be a chore to read, a characteristic of the dense nineteenth Century prose being verbosity: why use one word when ten or fifteen will do, and the small print doesn't help the reader's search for the relevant point in each sentence.
For example, "Yet when he at last arrived the difficulty of applying them, the accumulations of my problem, were brought straight home to me by the beautiful little presence on which what had occurred had as yet, for the eye, dropped neither stain nor shadow" is a sentence that might be distilled into a few words, if only the meaning could intuited, but really, life's too short to bother. In this case, maybe the movie will be better than the book.
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Details
- Bookseller
- E C Books (GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 033257
- Title
- The Turn of the Screw
- Author
- Henry James
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Good
- Jacket Condition
- No Jacket
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Publisher
- Martin Secker
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1915
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
- Bookseller catalogs
- Fiction;
Terms of Sale
E C Books
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About the Seller
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About E C Books
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- Remainder
- Book(s) which are sold at a very deep discount to alleviate publisher overstock. Often, though not always, they have a remainder...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Half Title
- The blank front page which appears just prior to the title page, and typically contains only the title of the book, although, at...
- Uniform Edition
- A collection or series of individual volumes of an author's work bound to match with a uniform size and style. Especially common...
- Verso
- The page bound on the left side of a book, opposite to the recto page.