The Turn of the Screw & The Lesson of the Master

by Henry James

The Lesson of the Master is a richly told tale of the young writer Paul Overt, who is "saved" by the renowned novelist Henry St. George. St. George leads Overt on the path of renunciation to literary greatness, even as he, St. George, renounces his own art for a life of comfort and complacency.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Horror

211 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1898

About the author

Henry James 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.
His novella 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. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
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."

Reviews

[federico garcía LOCA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very cool to find this possibly cursed 1930s Ed I found in a tiny bookshop on a Greek island in here. Possibly cursed bc I was accused of attempting to shoplift it… after I paid for it

Anyway - lesson of the master, actually haunting, excellently Jamesian, and thoroughly, well, modern. I can easily see some modern version, perhaps narrated by a woman (given the marriage/courtship plot a necessity as times have changed). The subject is one that is still so present for every artist and unraveled in a satisfying way. I see now why he is referred to as a timeless author. Time to google his personal life!

[julieta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stop everything. This book is supposed to be popular because of The Turn of the Screw. At least that is the one I had heard of.
First of all, let me mention what I love about Henry James. I love his portraits, the way he builds his characters, the way he describes every movement of their minds, the way he gets into what makes every one of them tick. Well, that is just what is absent in this story. Its a ghost story, and call me a skeptic, but I find all ghost stories a little silly. I mean, it has to be about something else, not just about "wickedness". Blame it on the century I live in, blame it on horror stories, blame it on Stephen King, blame it on the internet if you like. The fact is, the story is something I just could not quite get so involved in. And besides, since it is about ghosts, it was mostly theories, he-she did this, and that, thinking this and that, there is a lot of opinions and assumptions, but not much action.

Now let´s get to the second story. This is supposed to be the b side, the one no one really cares about. Well, this one to me, is more what I love about James. And there is an extra too. It´s about writers. And if there is something I love, it´s writers speaking of writing. The lesson of the master, is about the sacrifice one maybe should make if one wants to be a true, honest, real, big, artist. That is the question, and it is, to me, a good one. How much does conformity in your life affect your art? How is it that being happy and confortable maybe makes you want to write less, or be complacent, or easy.
The older writer in this book has been successful, but maybe he has stopped creating something real. He encounters the younger writer, and is impressed by his work, although he is starting out. And he begs him to sacrifice comfort, and the rest is just great.
Of course there is a woman involved, but I really loved everything about this story, and the question it leaves.
That is why I always think while I read his wonderful books, James is greatness.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

3. 75 stars. Overall, I enjoyed it. Curious to see Mike Flanagan's take on this story with "The Haunting of Bly Manor". Review to come.

[Jan Lynch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Years ago, my first reading of The Turn of the Screw left me disappointed. The language seemed unnecessarily convoluted, the plot vague. But having recently enjoyed Ruth Ware's The Turn of the Key, I wanted to re-read the work to which hers paid homage to see what I had missed. And I had missed quite a bit.

So much of Ware's Key echoes James that reading the classic after hers is much easier than approaching it blind. Key readers will recognize the governess who narrates the story, that she is thrust on her own into a challenging and isolated situation, that she is emotionally charged and unnaturally attached to her wards, that strange and frightening events happen, but for which only the governess's interpretation is given. And who knows to what extent that governess can be believed? Building on the access Ware provides, James's work becomes deliciously eerie and shadowy.

The second work in my edition was The Lesson of the Master, a story about a young writer who meets his hero, a writer whom he considers the pinnacle of the field. He should have remembered Flaubert's warning about not touching one's idols for a little of their gold will come off on one's fingers. This story was a fun bonus after Screw. It was light relief, as there was no ambiguity, just a straightforward, amusing, ironic tale with commentary on art and writing, but perhaps more on the vagaries of the human heart.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read some classic literature, some older than this, and have got to say this is seriously the hardest book I have ever read. In my short life.
I actually found the Lesson of the Master more enjoyable despite it's plot being less elaborate, as at least I could read it and not feel my brain smoking.

I give anyone who reads the Turn of the Screw and enjoys it gets the loudest, slowest clap I can muster. The governess we follow thoughts are so erratic at times I was reading and re-reading to piece together what happened. I assume this was revoluntary at the time but truthfully the climax barely took off the ground for me. I didn't even realize Miles dies until I read a plot summary as I knew my brain powered off 8 pages from the end. DO NOT GET ME WRONG both works are written with style and intelligence. I can appreciate them in a way (hence a 2 and not a 1 star) but this has not aged well in comparison of other horror novellas.

Honestly, you probably need to really into English studies to get into this book. This book took me an entire week to get through and its 211 pages....(second Novella I did in a day because again, way easier to read)

[Roberta Biallas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best way to read 'The Turn of the Screw' is to keep in mind the story was written in the 1890s. The style of speech and writing then was very different than it is today. Keeping that in mind, it does take a little while to get into the story. There is quite a lot of exposition in the tale and a MASSIVE helping of foreshadowing. But, all in all, the story was quite good.

'The Turn of the Screw' is most definitely a ghost story. But the diabolical nature of some of the LIVING characters are what makes the story equally chilling. I do highly recommend it.

[thestarsailor · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok, but just wasn't as interesting as the works of Edith Wharton. She's able to make the story clear and have a better punch at the end then how muddled both of these get. This copy mentions that The Turn of the Screw is "one of the most hauntingly ambiguous and variously interpreted works in literature" but I don't know who could summon the interest to write about it.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s such a short book that I kept at it when I could easily have walked away. The last part was interesting and I’m glad I stuck with it.
My edition has The Lesson... and now having read comments on that, I’ll give it a shot.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started to read this short novel when I was in high school over 40 years ago. I had always meant to get back to it and finally at Halloween this year, I decided to do so. Well - not sure what to say. The late-Victorian prose of James was, at times, very hard to decipher (probably why I put this aside years ago). The story itself was very unsettling and left you with a lot of ambiguities and unanswered questions. There were hints of homosexuality, pedophilia, illicit love affairs, and other sorts of assorted evils; however, they were only hints - the reader is left to make his/her own interpretations. And then there were the ghosts that presented themselves only to the governess - were these all in her mind or did the children also perceive the spirits as the governess insisted? Like I said earlier, the language was very hard to interpret. I decided to use SparkNotes as I was reading this to make sure I was making the correct interpretations of the text. I would recommend this to other readers. Overall, an interesting short novel (only 134 pages).



I would also recommend a very good film adaptation of Turn of the Screw starring Deborah Kerr from 1961: The Innocents . I watched this recently and was appropriately chilled!

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Turn of the Screw: ****
The Lesson of the Master: *

This edition of James' works is flawed in that while the first novella is actually really good, the second is just awful. I hardly understand the use of James' famous verbosity in the second, while it works out okay in the first. While the first had me turning pages way faster than usual, I felt that the second couldn't move any slower. Anyways, I suppose I will have to review them separately to give a better idea.

The Turn of the Screw is famous for being a riveting ghost story that is fairly unpredictable; I'd say that sums it up pretty well. Although James is famous for having a writing style that is insufferable difficult to understand (heh, Victorians...), I don't mind it so much in this case. It actually adds to the story unlike many of his other works that I have read; therefore, I think I really like this novella as a piece of entertainment and as a piece of literature.

[Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first novella is praiseworthy on many levels: psychological acuteness, convincing narrative ambiguity, penetrating phraseology, and--admit it!--sheer suspense. The second novella felt more set-'em-up-and-knock-'em-down, with characters that seemed less like richly imagined persons than names slapped onto terms (Pragmatism v. Passion, Experience v. Innocence), though there is an important and, for me at least, unforeseen twist at the book's end that makes the earlier more wooden material seem slightly more pliant. But only slightly. Again, it's the language that made me finish it. I love the description of the newly wedded Ms Fancourt as "happy with an aggressive splendor" as well as the longer descriptive passages about London--"the huge oppressive amusing city that suggested everything, that contained everything"--during Paul Overt's solitary walks .

[Tess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Henry James suffers from terminal verbosity. I liked Portrait of a Lady probably because I'd read The Age of Innocence by Wharton beforehand, but there is no comparison. Wharton is wonderful, whereas I find James insufferable.

I've tried to read The Golden Bowl and The Ambassadors, but I gave up with frustration. I know I should read them all as he is an American classic, but I'm afraid he has defeated me.

[Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Coming back to this book about 30 years after the first time I read The Turn of the Screw, I was struck by how much I remember but how different I felt. I liked it very much the first time. But this time, it just felt overly verbose. I seem to have lost my taste for Victorian fiction.

For every book, there may be a time best to read it.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Creepy especially when James wrote it, easy to tell why the Turn of the Screw is a classic.

[P.K. Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ghost story. Psychological thriller. The story premise is intriguing: two young siblings being haunted by two ghosts, with only a governess to protect them.

[Megan Yaek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second read is a must.
Horror is magnified when it's realistic.