The volume also includes James's great novella 'The Turn of the Screw', perhaps the most ambiguous and disturbing ghost story ever written. They include 'The Jolly Corner', a compelling story of psychological doubling 'Owen Wingrave', which is also a subtle parable of military tradition 'The Friends of the Friends', a strange story of uncanny love and 'The Private Life', which finds high comedy in its ghostly theme. The stories range widely in tone and type. This edition includes all ten of his 'apparitional' stories, or ghost stories in the strict sense of the term, and as such is the fullest collection currently available. His stories explore the region which lies between the supernatural or straightforwardly marvellous and the darker areas of the human psyche. Henry James was arguably the greatest practitioner of what has been called the psychological ghost story. The blurb to Schofield's collection claims that: The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868)Īs you'll observe, the stories are heavily weighted towards the latter end of James's career, after the traumatic failure of his theatrical ambitions (culminating in the horrific first night of his play Guy Domville (1995), when he was literally booed from the stage). Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 2001.
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