Leon Edel

The lives of two men-Roderick Hudson, a gifted sculptor, and Rowland Mallet, Roderick's benefactor-are tragically altered by love after they travel to Europe to further Hudson's career. Mallet, a wealthy bachelor, finds himself hopelessly in love with Mary Garland, a distant cousin of Roderick's engaged to marry the sculptor. Hudson, despite his engagement, falls desperately in love with Christina Light, one of the most beautiful women in Europe,...

The Sacred Fount is a novel by Henry James, first published in 1901. This strange, often baffling book concerns an unnamed narrator who attempts to discover the truth about the love lives of his fellow guests at a weekend party in the English countryside. He spurns the "detective and keyhole" methods as ignoble, and instead tries to decipher these relationships purely from the behavior and appearance of each guest. He expends huge resources of energy...

Though best known as a novelist, James also wrote non-fiction, including this controversial 1907 account of his 1905-06 American tour. By 1905 he had lived in England for twenty-five years, and it is as a returning expatriate that James views the country of his birth-and finds much to criticize in its embrace of crass materialism.

From one of America's greatest literary critics comes Edmund Wilson's insightful and candid record of the 1930's, The Thirties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period. Here, continuing from Wilson's previous journal, The Twenties, the narrator moves from the youthful concerns of the Jazz Age to his more substantial middle years, exploring the decade's plunge from affluence and exploring the tenets of Communism. His personal life is also amply...

"One of the great masterpieces of James's late period--and the author's own favorite among his works. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY. First published in 1903, The Ambassadors follows the middle-aged Lambert Strether, dispatched from Massachusetts to Paris by his wealthy fiancee to "rescue" her son Chad from the corrupting influences of Europe and its wicked women. Once Strether arrives in Paris, however, Chad introduces him to a world that he finds refined and...