Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (Henry James)

Daisy Miller, an 1878 novella by Henry James, portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a more sophisticated compatriot of hers. His pursuit of her is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates they meet in Switzerland and Italy. The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story that has lent itself well to operatic and film adaptation. Due to its ambiguous content The Turn of the Screw became a favourite text of New Criticism. The account has lent itself to dozens of different interpretations, often mutually exclusive, including those of a Freudian nature. Many critics have tried to determine the exact nature of evil in the story.
 
 The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media.
 
Oscar Wilde called James' chilling The Turn of the Screw 'a most wonderful, lurid poisonous little tale'. It tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil within the houses, she soon becomes obsessed with the belief that malevolent forces are stalking the children in her care.
 
About the Author 
Henry James (1843-1916) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
 
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
 
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."