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Publisher Description
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography)
One of the Best Books of 2012: The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, Boston Phoenix
A revelatory biography of the American master as told through the lens of his greatest novel.
Henry James (1843–1916) has had many biographers, but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the modern novel, combining elements of biography, criticism, and travelogue in re-creating the dramatic backstory of James’s masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady (1881). Gorra, an eminent literary critic, shows how this novel—the scandalous story of the expatriate American heiress Isabel Archer—came to be written in the first place. Traveling to Florence, Rome, Paris, and England, Gorra sheds new light on James’s family, the European literary circles—George Eliot, Flaubert, Turgenev—in which James made his name, and the psychological forces that enabled him to create this most memorable of female protagonists. Appealing to readers of Menand’s The Metaphysical Club and McCullough’s The Greater Journey, Portrait of a Novel provides a brilliant account of the greatest American novel of expatriate life ever written. It becomes a piercing detective story on its own.3 Reviews
4.0
Walsh Tommy
Created about 8 years agoShare
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“If you enjoy Henry James and, specifically, "Portrait of a Lady" then this book will be a joy to read. It encapsulates the life of "The Master" and, within it, weaves the inspirations and though processes which led to his writing the novel in Florence. The author speculates on who is "the lady" and how James came to his naturalistic denouement of the novel, and ending which leaves each reader breathless and in wonder! His portfolio is quite extensive ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Novels_by_Henry_James ) "Portrait' marks the height of his early writing. Mr. Gorra subtitles his novel-bio "The Making of an American Masterpiece." Bravo!!!!”
Chris Christopher
Created over 10 years agoShare
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J Casual
Created about 11 years agoShare
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“Excellent deconstruction of the novel: the times it was written and where it was written. A good description of the creative process as well as a limited biography of James.”
About Michael Gorra
Michael Gorra is the Mary Augusta Jordan Professor of English at Smith College, where he has taught since 1985. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation and, for his work as a reviewer, of the Balakian Award from the National Book Critics Circle. His books include The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War; Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of on American Masterpiece, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography; The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany; After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie; The English Novel at Mid-Century; and, as editor, The Portable Conrad and the Norton Critical Editions of The Sound and the Fury and The Portrait of a Lady.
Other books by Michael Gorra
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