The Bostonians: a Novel by Henry James (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Bostonians by Henry James, Richard Lansdown Basil Ransom, a young Mississippi lawyer arrives to Boston in search of a career. Through his cousin, Olive Chancellor, Ransom comes to meet Verena, the beautiful daughter of a charlatan faith-healer. Olive hopes to win the girl over to the feminist cause, Ransom is attracted to her looks, and a battle for possession of the girl begins. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description A provocative and astute portrayal of a world caught by the lure of progressPublished in 1886, The Bostonians begins with the arrival in Boston of Basil Ransom, a young Mississippi lawyer in search of a career. Through his cousin, Olive Chancellor, Ransom comes to meet Verena, the beautiful daughter of a charlatan faith-healer and showman. When they hear Verena talk, Olive hopes to win the girl over to the feminist cause, Ransom is attracted to her looks, and a battle for possession of the girl begins.With its discussion of the situation of women and its uncompromising depiction of the city and the media, THE BOSTONIANS is a modern novel which is immediately accessible and relevant today. Notes This months additions to the Penguin Classics series. This particular title is a new edition. Author Biography Henry James (1843-1916) was born in New York and settled in Europe in 1875. He was a regular contributor of reviews, critical essays, and short stories to American periodicals. He is best known for his many novels of American and European character.Richard Lansdown is a Lecturer in English at James Cook University in Queensland Australia. Review "As devastating in its wit as it is sharp in its social critique of sexual politics. No writer in America had dared the subject before. No one has done it so well since." —The New Republic Kirkus US Review One of the least known of James novels - and yet the only one that is uniformly American, Boston rejected it as a satire unflattering to their ego; in those days apparently Boston banning could break - not make - a book. Perhaps the American literary taste of the period could not relish the astringent quality of the book, the irony and the criticism of the American way of life. Today it reads as one of his most modern books, well worth this re-introduction, in a year when James appears to be again coming into his own. (Kirkus Reviews) Review Quote "As devastating in its wit as it is sharp in its social critique of sexual politics. No writer in America had dared the subject before. No one has done it so well since." -- The New Republic Excerpt from Book I "Olive will come down in about ten minutes; she told me to tell you that. About ten; that is exactly like Olive. Neither five nor fifteen, and yet not ten exactly, but either nine or eleven. She didnt tell me to say she was glad to see you, because she doesnt know whether she is or not, and she wouldnt for the world expose herself to telling a fib. She is very honest, is Olive Chancellor;1 she is full of rectitude. Nobody tells fibs in Boston; I dont know what to make of them all. Well, I am very glad to see you, at any rate." These words were spoken with much volubility by a fair, plump, smiling woman who entered a narrow drawing-room in which a visitor, kept waiting for a few moments, was already absorbed in a book. The gentleman had not even needed to sit down to become interested: apparently he had taken up the volume from a table as soon as he came in, and, standing there, after a single glance round the apartment, had lost himself in its pages. He threw it down at the approach of Mrs. Luna, laughed, shook hands with her, and said in answer to her last remark, "You imply that you do tell fibs. Perhaps that is one." "Oh no; there is nothing wonderful in my being glad to see you," Mrs. Luna rejoined, "when I tell you that I have been three long weeks in this unprevaricating city." "That has an unflattering sound for me," said the young man. "I pretend not to prevaricate." "Dear me, whats the good of being a Southerner?" the lady asked. "Olive told me to tell you she hoped you will stay to dinner. And if she said it, she does really hope it. She is willing to risk that." "Just as I am?" the visitor inquired, presenting himself with rather a work-a-day aspect. Mrs. Luna glanced at him from head to foot, and gave a little smiling sigh, as if he had been a long sum in addition. And, indeed, he was very long, Basil Ransom, and he even looked a little hard and discouraging, like a column of figures, in spite of the friendly face which he bent upon his hostesss deputy, and which, in its thinness, had a deep dry line, a sort of premature wrinkle, on either side of the mouth. He was tall and lean, and dressed throughout in black; his shirt-collar was low and wide, and the triangle of linen, a little crumpled, exhibited by the opening of his waistcoat, was adorned by a pin containing a small red stone. In spite of this decoration the young man looked poor--as poor as a young man could look who had such a fine head and such magnificent eyes. Those of Basil Ransom were dark, deep, and glowing; his head had a character of elevation which fairly added to his stature; it was a head to be seen above the level of a crowd, on some judicial bench or political platform, or even on a bronze medal. His forehead was high and broad, and his thick black hair, perfectly straight and glossy, and without any division, rolled back from it in a leonine manner. These things, the eyes especially, with their smouldering fire, might have indicated that he was to be a great American statesman; or, on the other hand, they might simply have proved that he came from Carolina or Alabama. He came, in fact, from Mississippi, and he spoke very perceptibly with the accent of that country. It is not in my power to reproduce by any combination of characters this charming dialect; but the initiated reader will have no difficulty in evoking the sound, which is to be associated in the present instance with nothing vulgar or vain. This lean, pale, sallow, shabby, striking young man, with his superior head, his sedentary shoulders, his expression of bright grimness and hard enthusiasm, his provincial, distinguished appearance, is, as a representative of his sex, the most important personage in my narrative; he played a very active part in the events I have undertaken in some degree to set forth. And yet the reader who likes a complete image, who desires to read with the senses as well as with the reason, is entreated not to forget that he prolonged his consonants and swallowed his vowels, that he was guilty of elisions and interpolations which were equally unexpected, and that his discourse was pervaded by something sultry and vast, something almost African in its rich, basking tone, something that suggested the teeming expanse of the cotton-field. Mrs. Luna looked up at all this, but saw only a part of it; otherwise she would not have replied in a bantering manner, in answer to his inquiry: "Are you ever different from this?" Mrs. Luna was familiar--intolerably familiar. Basil Ransom coloured a little. Then he said: "Oh yes; when I dine out I usually carry a six-shooter and a bowie-knife." And he took up his hat vaguely--a soft black hat with a low crown and an immense straight brim. Mrs. Luna wanted to know what he was doing. She made him sit down; she assured him that her sister quite expected him, would feel as sorry as she could ever feel for anything--for she was a kind of fatalist, anyhow--if he didnt stay to dinner. It was an immense pity--she herself was going out; in Boston you must jump at invitations. Olive, too, was going somewhere after dinner, but he mustnt mind that; perhaps he would like to go with her. It wasnt a party--Olive didnt go to parties; it was one of those weird meetings she was so fond of. "What kind of meetings do you refer to? You speak as if it were a rendezvous of witches on the Brocken." "Well, so it is; they are all witches and wizards, mediums, and spirit-rappers, and roaring radicals." Basil Ransom stared; the yellow light in his brown eyes deepened. "Do you mean to say your sisters a roaring radical?" "A radical? Shes a female Jacobin--shes a nihilist. Whatever is, is wrong, and all that sort of thing. If you are going to dine with her, you had better know it." "Oh, murder!" murmured the young man vaguely, sinking back in his chair with his arms folded. He looked at Mrs. Luna with intelligent incredulity. She was sufficiently pretty; her hair was in clusters of curls, like bunches of grapes; her tight bodice seemed to crack with her vivacity; and from beneath the stiff little plaits of her petticoat a small fat foot protruded, resting upon a stilted heel. She was attractive and impertinent, especially the latter. He seemed to think it was a great pity, what she had told him; but he lost himself in this consideration, or, at any rate, said nothing for some time, while his eyes wandered over Mrs. Luna, and he probably wondered what body of doctrine she represented, little as she might partake of the nature of her sister. Many things were strange to Basil Ransom; Boston especially was strewn with surprises, and he was a man who liked to understand. Mrs. Luna was drawing on her gloves; Ransom had never seen any that were so long; they reminded him of stockings, and he wondered how she managed without garters above the elbow. "Well, I suppose I might have known that," he continued, at last. "You might have known what?" "Well, that Miss Chancellor would be all that you say. She was brought up in the city of reform." "Oh, it isnt the city; its just Olive Chancellor. She would reform the solar system if she could get hold of it. Shell reform you, if you dont look out. Thats the way I found her when I returned from Europe." "Have you been in Europe?" Ransom asked. "Mercy, yes! Havent you?" "No, I havent been anywhere. Has your sister?" "Yes; but she stayed only an hour or two. She hates it; she would like to abolish it. Didnt you know I had been to Europe?" Mrs. Luna went on, in the slightly aggrieved tone of a woman who discovers the limits of her reputation. Ransom reflected he might answer her that until five minutes ago he didnt know she existed; but he remembered that this was not the way in which a Southern gentleman spoke to ladies, and he contented himself with saying that she must condone5 his Boeotian ignorance6 (he was fond of an elegant phrase); that he lived in a part of the country where they didnt think much about Europe, and that he had always supposed she was domiciled in New York. This last remark he made at a venture, for he had, naturally, not devoted any supposition whatever to Mrs. Luna. His dishonesty, however, only exposed him the more. "If you thought I lived in New York, why in the world didnt you come and see me?" the lady inquired. "Well, you see, I dont go out much, except to the courts." "Do you mean the law-courts? Every one has got some profession over here! Are you very ambitious? You look as if you were." "Yes, very," Basil Ransom replied, with a smile, and the curious feminine softness with which Southern gentlemen enunciate that adverb. Mrs. Luna explained that she had been living in Europe for several years--ever since her husband died--but had come home a month before, come home with her little boy, the only thing she had in the world, and was paying a visit to her sister, who, of course, was the nearest thing after the child. "But it isnt the same," she said. "Olive and I disagree so much." "While you and your little boy dont," the young man remarked. "Oh no, I never differ from Newton!" And Mrs. Luna added that now she was back she didnt know what she should do. That was the worst of coming back; it was like being born again, at ones age--one had to begin life afresh. One didnt even know what one had come back for. There were people who wanted one to spend the winter in Boston; but she couldnt stand that--she knew, at least, what she had not come back for. Perhaps she should take a house in Washington; did he ever hear of that little place? They had invented it while Details ISBN0140437665 Series Penguin Classics Language English ISBN-10 0140437665 ISBN-13 9780140437669 Media Book Subtitle a Novel Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom Illustrations notes, further reading, appendices Edition 1st Edited by Richard Lansdown Birth 1961 Tag pengblackclassics Format Paperback Short Title BOSTONIANS REV/E Edition Description Revised Imprint Penguin Classics DOI 10.1604/9780140437669 UK Release Date 2000-08-14 Author Richard Lansdown Pages 448 Publisher Penguin Books Ltd Year 2000 Publication Date 2000-08-14 Alternative 9780141907796 DEWEY 813.4 Audience General NZ Release Date 2000-09-17 AU Release Date 2000-09-17 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:531219;

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