Nicholas Clifford (1930-2019)
Sir Edmund Orme
Henry James wrote a number of ghost stories -- The Turn of the Screw being the most famous. Did he believe in ghosts himself, as did many of…
The Reverberator
Another Jamesian look at Americans in Paris. What happens when a reporter for an American scandal sheet (The Reverberator) is looking for a …
La Grande Bretèche
La Grande Bretèche is an addendum to Balzac's Another Study of Woman, and is the final of a set of stories told around a dinner table…
A Little Swiss Sojourn
A charming brief account of a two months' autumnal stay on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. Howells, who was there with his family travelin…
The Chaperon
What on earth is a girl to do when London society has convicted her mother of a dreadful sin and has ostracized her? If blood is thicker tha…
Warren Hastings
"Warren Hastings" is Chapter IV of Thomas Macaulay's Critical and Historical Essays, vol. III. It first appeared in the Edinburgh …
Sybil, or the Two Nations
Sybil is one of the most prominent political novels of the mid-nineteenth century, taking as its subject the "condition of England"…
Another Study of Woman
A series of tales -- told by men, of course -- about women. Though the book first appeared in 1842, Balzac later added to it as an addenfum …
The Lesson of the Master
A promising young writer meets an older man whose works have inspired him, as well as a highly intelligent and attractive young woman, at a …
Seven Men
In order to liven up the literary history of Great Britain in the 1890s (as if Oscar Wilde, Stevenson, Kipling, Hardy, etc., were not lively…
The Jolly Corner
"The Jolly Corner," published in 1908, is considered by many to be a ghost story ranking second only to "The Turn of the Scre…
The Last of the Valerii
An unnamed American painter resident in Rome serves as narrator in this story, watching as his god-daughter Martha, becomes the wife of Prin…
The Czar's Spy: The Mystery of a Silent Love (version 2)
A mysterious burgary of the British Consulate at Leghorn, coupled with the even more mysterious visit of an English yacht, leads to a trail …
The Birthplace
Neither the name of Shakespeare nor that of Stratford appears directly in this short piece by James, and yet both are absolutely central to …
Coningsby, or The New Generation
Coningsby is the first of trilogy of political novels that Disraeli published in the 1840s, and gives an insight into his views of the polit…
Lord Beaupre
What is a young man to do, when because of his pleasant disposition, and (of course) his considerable wealth, he finds himself besieged by b…