Portrait of a Lady
Descriere
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.”
Despre autor
Henry James, fiu al lui Henry James Sr., frate al filosofului și psihologului William James, respectiv al memorialistei Alice James, a fost un romancier, critic literar, dramaturg și prozator american cu cetățenie britanică din sfârșitul secolului al XIX-lea și începutul secolului al XX-lea.
