Description
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 shows how this scandalous story came to be written. Travelling to Italy, France and England, he sheds new light on James’s family, the European literary circles of George Eliot, Flaubert and Turgenev in which James made his name, and the psychological forces that enabled him to create the most memorable female protagonist. A piercing detective story, Portrait of a Novel provides a brilliant account of the greatest American novel of expatriate life ever written.
Reviews
"...he [Gorra] has written the kind of patient, sensitive, acute study that gifted teachers should write but rarely do." — London Review of Books
"Michael Gorra...has pulled off an astounding feat...in this impressive study...Gorra goes anywhere that strikes his fancy, and the result is splendid: a book to reread in years to come, a model for what criticism can do when happily married to biography." — Literary Review
Also By: Michael Gorra 
As I Lay Dying: A Norton Critical Edition
Second Edition, Paperback, 2022
The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War
Paperback, 2021
Michael Gorra, one of America’s most preeminent literary critics, asks how we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century.
The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War
Hardback, 2020
Michael Gorra, one of America’s most preeminent literary critics, asks how we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century.
The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War
E Book, 2020
Michael Gorra, one of America’s most preeminent literary critics, asks how we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century.
The Portrait of a Lady: A Norton Critical Edition
First Edition, Paperback, 2017
Henry James’s most famous novel edited by the critically acclaimed author of Portrait of a Novel.
