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The Real Thing is, on one level, a somewhat ironic tale of an artist and two rather particular models. Yet it also raises questions about the relationship between the notion of reality in our humdrum world, and the means that an artist must use in trying to achieve, or reflect, that reality. Though the protagonist is an artist and illustrator of books, not a writer, it's not hard to imagine that James has himself, and other writers, in mind.(summary by Clifford)...

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...The man with the surprise endings: that was O. Henry's trademark. This is the second published collection of short stories by O. Henry originally released in 1906. There are twenty five stories of various lengths including several of his best known works such as The Gift ...

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...The Beast in the Jungle' is a 1903 novella by Henry James, first published as part of the collection, The Better Sort. Almost universally considered one of James' finest short narratives, this story treats appropriately universal themes: loneliness, fate, love and death....

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Neither the name of Shakespeare nor that of Stratford appears directly in this short piece by James, and yet both are absolutely central to his plot. The story has to do with Mr. and Mrs. Gedge, tempted away from a dreary northern town library, which he runs, to become the wardens – caretakers and tour guides – of the house where the greatest writer of the English language was born, and in which he grew up. Or did he? There is, after all, a paucity of facts about His life (in James's text, that pronoun is always capitalized, as befits a deity) and only the slenderest of historical evidence about the existence of such a man. No matter; what is important is the myth of his life, and the myth needs to be cared for and fostered so that crowds upon crowds of tourists may come, and, with a proper reverence, worship at His Birthplace. And yet it is only myth, and the more he thinks of it, the unhappier poor honest Gedge becomes (to Mrs. Gedge, however, a job is a job, and too much speculation on reality might perhaps lead to dismissal). James himself was high skeptical about the Shakespeare question (who actually did write all those plays?...

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...Henry James considered The Ambassadors his best, or perhaps his best-wrought, novel. It plays on the great Jamesian theme of the American abroad, who finds himself in an older, and some would say richer, culture that that of ...

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This short novel is a black comedy about fame, manipulation, pretension, and surviving it all. The narrator, a reprehensible and seedy journalist, sets out to interview a minor author, and in his own quest for glory, turns the author into the celebrity of the day. The sudden and untimely death of the author, with his latest work unfinished, presents a troubling dilemma for the narrator, which he resolves with no more conscience than he had when he began his quest. (Introduction by Christine Dufour)...

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Fiction

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...Levity is not a word often applied to Henry James, but this story has about it an attractively lighthearted quality. It tells of Peter Baron, a poor, young struggling writer of adequate, if not transcendent, talent, who lives in a dreary London boarding house inh...

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Fiction

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The recently widowed Adela Gereth, a lover of beauty and passionate collector of fine objects, strikes up a friendship with the young Fleda Vetch, when both of them find themselves guests in the tasteless house of Brigstock family. Mrs. Gereth fears that her son Owen, an honorable but somewhat unimaginative young man, may take up with one of the Brigstock girls, and indeed he presently announces his engagement to Mona, the eldest daughter. That means that Mrs. Gereth will have to leave Poynton, the beautiful house that she and her husband filled with the furniture, china, tapestries, and other objects that they lovingly collected over the years. It is not so much possessiveness that drives Mrs. Gereth to want to maintain control over them (or so she claims, at any rate), but rather the sense that she will have failed if Mona, understanding and appreciating nothing of what Poynton contains, should become Owen's wife and take charge. The story and its developing conflicts are seen largely from the point of view of Fleda Vetch, the young woman who, her moral and aesthetic sensibilities tuned perhaps as finely as any of James's protagon...

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Fiction

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This novella explores the relationship between Frank Saltram, a charismatic speaker who is also a freeloader; Ruth Anvoy, a young American who visits her widowed aunt, Lady Coxon, an American who married a Brit; and George Gravener, a British intellectual with a future in politics who becomes engaged to Ms. Anvoy. The story revolves around the dispersal of The Coxon Fund, a sum of money left by Ms. Anvoy’s father with the stipulation that is be given to a great man to publish and pursue moral truth. (Summary by Dorlene Kaplan)...

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Fiction

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Pemberton, a young American with an Oxford education and out of money, takes a job tutoring Morgan Moreen, the 12-year old son of an American couple living in Europe in a style not quite matched by their income. Mr. and Mrs. Moreen's main purpose in life, it appears, is to win acceptance in the higher circles of French and Italian society, partly in the hope that Morgan's two elder sisters will be taken off their hands. Morgan, who is highly intelligent, is also precocious and perceptive enough to come to understand his parents' ambitious aimlessness. Something of a crisis develops when the Moreens fail to make good on the salary they've promised Pemberton, and he leaves, needing a steady income. By then, however, the tutor has become sufficiently interested in and attached to his charge to be unwilling to leave Morgan for long, and comes back to join the family when when Morgan's mother tells him the boy has fallen ill. There, however, he finds the family shipwreck that he has feared is now taking place, and he is in time to witness it.(Summary by Nicholas Clifford)...

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Fiction

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...In the Cage is a novella by Henry James, first published as a book in 1898. This long story centers on an unnamed London telegraphist. She deciphers clues to her clients' personal lives from the often cryptic telegrams they submit to her as she sits in ...

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Fiction, Literature

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A fable of literally life and death significance, the story explores how the protagonist tries to keep the remembrance of his dead friends, to save them from being forgotten entirely in the rush of everyday events. He meets a woman who shares his ideals, only to find that the past places what seems to be an impassable barrier between them. Although James was not religious in any conventional sense, the story shows a deep spirituality in its treatment of mortality and the transcendent power of unselfish love....

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Fiction, Romance

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One of James’s favorite short novels, the Aspern Papers tells of the efforts of the nameless narrator to procure the papers of a famous, but now dead, American poet. His attempts to secure them from the poet’s former lover and her niece, now recluses in Venice, are stymied both by them, and by his own mistakes in his quest....

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Fiction, Literature

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The story ostensibly concerns a young literary critics who greatly admirs the writer Hugh Vereker. A meeting with Vereker, however, shows him that he – and all other critics – have in fact missed the great point of Verreker's work, and the critic (and his editor) thereupon devote themselves to trying to unravel the mystery. James's story, however, almost certainly has an autobiographical side to it, perhaps itself criticizing those critics who couldn't see, or wouldn't see, the figures lost in the carpet of his own writing. (Summary by Nicholas Clifford)...

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Fiction, Literature

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...many of the finer vibrations as possible, and so achieve, however briefly and brokenly, the sense of having lived. (summary taken from the Preface by Henry James)...

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Fiction, Literature

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...The Europeans: A sketch is a short novel by Henry James, published in 1878. It is essentially a comedy contrasting the behaviour and attitudes of two visitors from Europe with those of their relatives living in the 'new' world of New England. The novel first appeared a...

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Comedy, Fiction, Humor, Travel

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...The narrator dies in the first sentence. Through relating his travels in the afterlife, Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, gently satirizes life here on earth. (Summary by Denny Sayers)...

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Fantasy, Fiction, Satire

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The Jolly Corner, published in 1908, is considered by many to be a ghost story ranking second only to The Turn of the Screw. James’s protagonist, Spencer Brydon, is an American of 56, returned to New York after 33 years in Europe, where he has apparently accomplished little while living off his New York rentals. His friendship with Alice Staverton, and his engagement in the development of a property awaken him to the possibilities that might have been his, had he chosen a different course of life. The ghost, if that’s what it is, is that other self that might have been, and his confrontation with that self and its possibilities leads to a deeply unsettling, yet ambiguous, conclusion....

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Fiction, Horror/Ghost stories

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A lone space traveler arrives on Earth seeking a new planet to colonize, his own world dead. At the same time a mysterious plague has infected Earth that will wipe out all life. Can a lone scientist stop the plague and save the world? Or will the alien find himself on another doomed planet? (Summary by Mark Nelson)...

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Science fiction, Fiction

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...ll some of the stories of King Arthur and his Knights in a way which will be interesting to every boy and girl who loves adventures. (Introduction by Henry Gilbert)...

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Fiction, Teen/Young adult, Adventure