Henry James led a wandering life, which took him far from his native shores, but he continued to think of New York City, where his family had settled for several years during his childhood, as his hometown. Here Colm Tóibín, the author of the Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel The Master, a portrait of Henry James, brings together for the first time all the stories that James set in New York City. Written over the course of James’s career and ranging from the deliciously tart comedy of the early “An International Episode” to the surreal and haunted corridors of “The Jolly Corner,” and including “Washington Square,” the poignant novella considered by many (though not, as it happens, by the author himself) to be one of James’s finest achievements, the nine fictions gathered here reflect James’s varied talents and interests as well as the deep and abiding preoccupations of his imagination. And throughout the book, as Tóibín’s fascinating introduction demonstrates, we see James struggling to make sense of a city in whose rapidly changing outlines he discerned both much that he remembered and held dear as well as everything about America and its future that he dreaded most. Stories included: The Story of a Masterpiece A Most Extraordinary Case Crawford’s Consistency An International Episode The Impressions of a Cousin The Jolly Corner Washington Square Crapy Cornelia A Round of Visits

Encompassing a period of almost 50 years, the stories of Henry James represent the most remarkable feat of sustained literary creation in modern times. These two volumes contain his best work from 1866 to 1891.

Critical essays and excerpts from James' notebooks, letters, and prefaces accompany nine stories that deal with ghosts, tyranny, the impact of Europe on Americans, and social manipulation

An illustrated collection of more than 200 stories arranged in chronological order of publication.

Henry James was the preeminent American writer of the late 19th century, a master of fiction who was also a subtle and audacious literary theorist. This volume brings together the most important of his short stories and novellas with his most significant critical writings. Selected from Library of America's authoritative five-volume edition of James's complete stories, the works collected here--among them "Daisy Miller," "The Aspern Papers," "The Beast in the Jungle," "The Turn of the Screw," and "The Great Good Place"--display his astonishing creative range, encompassing social comedy and supernatural horror, acute psychological portraiture and penetrating analysis of cultural conflict. A selection of James's criticism includes "The Art of Fiction," his declaration of the novelist's freedom, the celebrated preface to The Portrait of a Lady, and fascinating discussions of Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman, Shakespeare, and Balzac.