The Portrait of A Lady

Isabel Archer arrives in Europe with an inheritance, strong opinions and a determination to choose her own life, and Henry James follows the consequences across the length of his best-known novel. The book spends its time on conversation, observation and the slow revelation of motive rather than on incident. James writes about money, marriage and freedom among expatriate Americans in England and Italy, and the Penguin Classics text gives readers the full novel with supporting notes, which helps when tracking the shifts in what characters know and conceal. A quick summary: • A long, character-driven novel of Americans abroad in Europe • James's exacting analysis of motive, money and marriage • Settings that move between English country houses and Italian cities • A complete Penguin Classics text with editorial support Suited to readers of literary fiction, university courses on the novel and patient book-club discussion, available from Boipoka.