The Portrait of a Lady

One of the great heroines of American literature, Isabel Archer, journeys to Europe in order to, as Henry James writes in his 1908 Preface, "affront her destiny." James began The Portrait of a Lady without a plot or subject, only the slim but provocative notion of a young woman taking control of her fate. The result is a richly imagined study of an American heiress who turns away her suitors in an effort to first establish--and then protect--her independence. But Isabel's pursuit of spiritual freedom collapses when she meets the captivating Gilbert Osmond. "James's formidable powers of observation, his stance as a kind of bachelor recorder of human doings in which he is not involved," writes Hortense Calisher, "make him a first-class documentarian, joining him to that great body of storytellers who amass what formal history cannot."

Author: Henry James
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 02/12/2002
Series: Modern Library Classics
Pages: 640
Weight: 1lbs
Size: 8.02h x 5.22w x 0.94d
ISBN: 9780375759192

About the Author
Anita Brookner is the author of twenty novels, including Falling Slowly, Undue Influence, and Hotel du Lac, which won the Booker Prize. She lives in London.