Novels 19031911

"This volume, the sixth and final in The Library of America's edition of the complete novels of Henry James, brings together two masterpieces of his extraordinary late period--The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904)--as well as his last extended narrative work, The Outcry (1911), a short comic novel of social manners. "The idea for The Ambassadors came from James's friend William Dean Howells, who told of having given advice to a friend in France: 'You have time. You are young. Live!' In James's novel, a conscientious American, Lambert Strether, travels to Paris to convince Chad Newsome, the son of a friend, to return home and take charge of family business matters. Strether finds Newsome significantly altered--mature and sophisticated, and with a mistress. Strether himself eventually succumbs to the charms of the Old World and gives up his mission. Although others arrive from America to attempt to lure Newsome home, only the older man recognizes the true nature of the young man's transformation. "James described The Golden Bowl as 'the most done of my productions--the most composed and constructed and completed.' In the novel an American woman, Maggie Verver, marries an