Bibliograph

Portrait of a novel, Henry James and the making of an American masterpiece, Michael Gorra

Type

Label

Portrait of a novel, Henry James and the making of an American masterpiece, Michael Gorra

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

resource.biographical

individual biography

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Portrait of a novel

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

755705017

Responsibility statement

Michael Gorra

Sub title

Henry James and the making of an American masterpiece

Summary

Henry James (1843<U+2013>1916) has had many biographers, but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the modern novel, combining elements of biography, criticism, and travelogue in re-creating the dramatic backstory of James<U+2019>s masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady (1881). Gorra, an eminent literary critic, shows how this novel<U+2014>the scandalous story of the expatriate American heiress Isabel Archer<U+2014>came to be written in the first place. Traveling to Florence, Rome, Paris, and England, Gorra sheds new light on James<U+2019>s family, the European literary circles<U+2014>George Eliot, Flaubert, Turgenev<U+2014>in which James made his name, and the psychological forces that enabled him to create this most memorable of female protagonists. Appealing to readers of Menand<U+2019>s The Metaphysical Club and McCullough<U+2019>s The Greater Journey, Portrait of a Novel provides a brilliant account of the greatest American novel of expatriate life ever written. It becomes a piercing detective story on its own

Target audience

adult

resource.variantTitle

Henry James and the making of an American masterpiece

Classification