'
One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.'
Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe.
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This edition reproduces the revised New York Edition, with James's own Preface.
It is at once a dramatic Victorian tale of betrayal and a wholly modern psychological study of a woman caught in a web of relations she only comes to understand too late.
Considered by many as one of the finest novels in the English language, this is Henry James's most poised achievement, written at the height of his fame in 1881.
What had seemed to be a vista of infinite promise steadily closes around her and becomes instead a 'house of suffocation'.
Yet in the intoxicating worlds of Paris, Florence, and Rome, her fond illusions of self-reliance are twisted by the machinations of her friends and apparent allies.
Thanks to the generosity of her devoted cousin Ralph, she is free to make her own choice about her destiny.
She rejects two eligible suitors in her fervent commitment to liberty and independence, declaring that she will never marry. '
One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.'
Isabel Archer is a young, intelligent, and spirited American girl, determined to relish her first experience of Europe
