The American tells the story of Christopher Newman, an American on his first tour of Europe. While touring Newman meets a French noblewoman whom he falls head over heels in love with. She agrees to marry him.

Her family, however, likes his money but dislikes his intense love of capitalist values and democratic politics. Eventually the older members of the family decide to forbid the marriage, despite Newman’s best efforts. The young noblewoman enters a convent, forever beyond Newman’s hands.

Newman gets his chance for revenge, however, when his friend, the younger brother in his would-be wife’s family, dies during a duel with another man. Before dying, however, the brother gives Newman a vital piece of information: the mother and older brother in the family have committed murder in the past and gotten away with it. He gets evidence of the murder and prepares to use it.

But Newman, being a good soul at heart, eventually decides to burn what evidence he has and let the matter drop. His heart remains torn, however, and the book ends on a rather depressing note.

The Ambassadors tells the story of Lambert Strether, a middle-aged but inexperienced man who agrees to go to Paris for his fiancee and rescue her son from a ‘wicked’ woman.

Upon arriving in Paris and meeting son Chad, however, Strether discovers that the woman is not wretched at all, but rather a lovely daughter named Jeanne. She also has a mother, Marie, and Strether isn’t sure which one Chad is more attracted to. At any rate Strether grows to love the place and, deciding Chad has grown immeasurably while in Paris, advises him not to return to the United States.

The fiancee, now impatient, sends new emissaries to bring Chad back, the most fearsome of which is Strether’s sister. She demands Chad return. Strether takes his leave of this spectacle and tours France - only to come across Chad and mother Marie in an inn.

Realizing their commitment to one another, Strether insists they remain together in France. Despite this insistence, however, Strether can’t bring himself to stay, and he heads home.

The Portrait of a Lady tells the story of Isabel Archer, a young American suddenly confronted with a considerable amount of money from an inheritance. She quickly comes under attack, however, by a pair of con-artists looking to take her fortune from her. She naively marries one, a man named Osmund, but their relationship sours when she discovers not only his overt bravado but his lack of affection towards her.

But when she discovers that a friend is sick and dying, she returns home - against her husband’s wishes - to tend to him in his last days. And though at the end of the novel she does return to Rome (where she lived with Osmund) it’s left open whether or not she actually continued to live with her husband.

The Portrait of a Lady has since been turned into a mini-series by the BBC in 1968 and a film in 1996, with Nicole Kidman as Isabel and John Malkovich as Osmund.

Traveling to the man’s country house the governess takes control of the children and, assisted by the house’s staff, begins the process of educating and caring for them. But not long after she arrives she begins to see the dual figures of a man and woman around the estate. What’s more, she’s the only one who can see them: neither the staff nor the children seem to have any awareness of the spirits. The woman slowly comes to the conclusion that they are the spirits of the former governess and her lover.

What’s more, the ghosts seem to be manipulating the children. Both boy and girl start to act oddly, going places they shouldn’t and stealing things that aren’t there. After one particularly frightening episode where the girl rows herself across a small lake in a boat, the governess starts to break down, and she eventually demands the truth of the boy. And he seems ready to give it, almost acknowledging the spirit of the man - but then, on the moment of revelation, his heart stops.

The book is ambiguous on whether or not the governess was actually seeing the supernatural or if she was merely paranoid.

The novella details the flirtatious relationship between American-born Daisy Miller – who wishes to become a part of European high life – and Winterbourne, a student on holiday in Switzerland.

The pair meet, banter back and forth, and then promise to meet again in Rome. They do so; but Winterbourne finds Miller on the arm of a local Italian man of no real social importance. This abhors the local status elite, and they begin to detest Miller. Winterbourne tries to warn her of this by to no avail.

The novella concludes when Winterbourne rejects Miller as a mere commoner below his interest. Miller, heartbroken, wanders out into the cold Roman air, falls ill and dies several days later. It is only upon her death that Winterbourne realizes Miller had not rejected his earlier advances, and that she was just a harmless flirt.

Among all that he’s probably best known for his Henry James novels. Fathered by an intellectual who had him moving internationally between Europe and America, James was tutored by some of the brightest minds of the time and injected his subsequent knowledge in psychology and philosophy into his novels. He published his first novel, Watch and Ward, in 1871.

Among his greatest masterpieces are Daisy Miller in 1879, The Portrait of a Lady in 1881 and The Wings of the Dove in 1902. His most well known story, however, is doubtless The Turn of the Screw, a ghost story in which the main character becomes obsessed with the corruption of childhood innocence.

Henry James Novels (excludes novellas)

1917 - The Sense of the Past (unfinished)
1917 - The Ivory Tower (unfinished)
1911 - The Outcry
1908 - The Whole Family
1904 - The Golden Bowl
1903 - The Ambassadors
1902 - The Wings of the Dove
1901 - The Sacred Fount
1899 - The Awkward Age
1897 - What Maisie Knew
1897 - The Spoils of Poynton
1896 - The Other House
1890 - The Tragic Muse
1888 - The Reverberator
1886 - The Princess Casamassima
1886 - The Bostonians
1881 - The Portrait of a Lady
1880 - Washington Square
1879 - Confidence
1878 - The Europeans
1877 - The American
1875 - Roderick Hudson
1871 - Watch and Ward