The Portrait of a Lady (Oxford World's Classics)

If you adore fine writing, deep characterization, a story that does not offer up easy answers...and one that sets the tone for fine endings in a modern sensibility...read this novel...James sympathized with women and their dilemmas in a world that offered few options...and opens a window to the soul's yearnings for more....

Henry James uses his mastery of the English language to parse out intimate human nature and regret. Profound and memorable.

If you need a brain exercise, and wish to expand your knowledge of Victorian writers, this is a good book.However, if you read on the level of a 8th or 9th grader, don't choose this book. It is typical of the erain which it was written. I appreciated the glossary in the back to explain archaic words and phrases.The story is about an American woman who is taken to England by an aunt after her parents aredeceased. She is blessed to receive a large sum of money that enables her to live "free," or sheso believes. She eventually learns differently. It doesn't end the way books of today would, but verymuch typical of that time and era. It made me realize how much attitudes have changed in the past100 years.

What a great novel! Start here if you're reading Henry James. Oxford uses the New York edition, which I prefer, and is good in the notes about signaling some of the more significant change that James made in his revisions.

This work is considered to be part of the essential canon of Western literature. Yet, if feels like an unpolished work from a young writer. It is possible that James was still a writer in progress when he wrote Portrait of a Lady.Though he had a great writing style, very few of the protagonists are fully developed in this novel. The thought process and the decisions of the key players are not explained. Why did Isabel ever choose Osmond, the least attractive option? Why did she return to him, supposedly? Osmod and Madame Merle maintain a secretive, complicated relationship which is the nail on which everything hangs. Even in the nineteenth century, it is unlikely that people behaved this way or could be manipulated this easily.If you are new to Henry James, you are better off starting with The Ambassadors or the Golden Bowl.

Fascinating characters in deep contrast to one another. A deeply kept secret. Love and hate. Ambition and ruthlessly using a young woman for personal gain.

To say this is a classic might condemn it is the eyes of some, but the portrait of Isabel Archer, and of the development of her sensibility is truly a great, subtle and witty portrait of a lady! Highly, highly recommended.

The book starts jumping to footnotes at about 50%. I was reading this on a Galaxy Note 10 with latest Kindle reader. Somewhere near 50% through the book, tapping to move to the next page took me to a footnote. Tapping again --> another footnote. Scrolling forward using the little scrollbar, I found some more regular text, but skipped unknonw number of pages in the process.Most classic novels are available for free elsewhere. I purchased this so I could count on the quality of the digital conversion. Now I am out the money (too late for a refund) and have to find the book elsewhere. I'll probably forget it. I think Henry James is pretty boring. I assume that's why this error was not discivered before.

This is Henry James’ masterpiece. An exquisite story of a doomed marriage; the scene between Isabel and Ralph near the end is one of the very great scenes in all literature. I cannot recommend this novel too highly and the Oxford edition has a good introduction and helpful notes.

Heard this book is really good

L anglais bien écrit de cette période. La tournure des phrases comme on les a appris à l ecole et non pas comme on les dit au quotidien. Quelle érudition.

Good

I've just finished reading this for the second time - this time for a university course - and the ending left me as puzzled and unsettled as it did the first time. Henry James is an almost unbearably elegant writer, and I wonder, perhaps uncharitably, if his portrait of the crushing of spirited Isabel Archer by the death-dealing Gilbert Osmond and his embittered eminence grise, Madame Merle, is rooted in too close an acquaintance with the stultifying consequences of placing an inordinate importance on good taste and an over-reliance on the approval of others. God, I was willing her to marry Ralph Touchett, or perhaps Lord Warburton - even the oafish Caspar Goodwood would have been better than Osmond. But to go back to him - for Heaven's sake, girl, what are you THINKING? I wonder if anybody has attempted a sequel to this beautiful, disturbing masterpiece, where our heroine finally gets her revenge, perhaps by oh-so-elegantly murdering the little weasel by poisoning his claret and framing her nemesis before rescuing Pansy from the convent and running off to Boston to start a women's publishing house with Henrietta Stackpole. Mmm. . .appealing idea. . .