The New York Review of Books

‘The premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.’

November 14th 2012

In his 1906 preface to the revised New York Edition of The Portrait, James wrote that the germ of his idea for the book was not a “plot” but a single character—“a certain young woman affronting her destiny,” a “mere slim shade of an intelligent but presumptuous girl”—and that he would place the center of the story in her consciousness.

Jean Strouse, Why Did Isabel Go Back?

Photo: Henry James, circa 1906, the year he completed his revised version of The Portrait of a Lady (Alice Boughton/Smithsonian/Art Resource)

Posted at 6:04pm and tagged with: The New York Review of Books, Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Jean Strouse,.

In his 1906 preface to the revised New York Edition of The Portrait, James wrote that the germ of his idea for the book was not a “plot” but a single character—“a certain young woman affronting her destiny,” a “mere slim shade of an intelligent but presumptuous girl”—and that he would place the center of the story in her consciousness.

Jean Strouse, Why Did Isabel Go Back?

Photo: Henry James, circa 1906, the year he completed his revised version of The Portrait of a Lady (Alice Boughton/Smithsonian/Art Resource)

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