PDF Books in Fiction Short Stories
Madame De Mauves
by Henry JamesMadame de Mauves is a novella by Henry James, originally published in The Galaxy magazine in 1874. The story centers on the troubled marriage of a scrupulous American wife and a far from scrupulous French husband, and is told mostly from the point of view of a male friend of the wife. The tale reflects the intense interest James took in the "intern..
The Author of Beltraffio
by Henry JamesThe Author of Beltraffio is a short story by Henry James, first published in the English Illustrated Magazine in 1884. This macabre account of desperate family infighting eventually leads to a tragic conclusion. Although the father in the story is a novelist, the tale concentrates far more on his family relationships than on his special concerns as..
A Passionate Pilgrim
by Henry JamesA Passionate Pilgrim is a novella by Henry James, first published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1871. The story was the earliest fiction that James included in the New York Edition (1907–09) of his works. Set in England, the tale shows James' strong interest in the contrast between the Old World and the New. In fact, the difference between America and..
The Birthplace
by Henry JamesThe Birthplace is a short story by Henry James, first published in his collection The Better Sort in 1903. A witty satire on the excesses of bardolatry, the story reflects James's skepticism about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Beyond the narrow scholarly issue, the story also shows a typically imaginative Jamesian protagonist inventing an ..
The Reverberator
by Henry JamesThe Reverberator is a short novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in Macmillan's Magazine in 1888 and then as a book later the same year. Described by the leading web authority on Henry James as "a delightful Parisian bonbon," the comedy traces the complications that result when nasty but true stories about a Paris family get into the A..
Glasses
by Henry JamesGlasses is an 1896 short story by Henry James. A young woman whose only asset is a supremely beautiful face is about to make a society marriage until her fiancé discovers that, being virtually blind, she needs thick glasses which ruin her looks.The anonymous narrator, a bachelor artist, visits Folkestone and sees a young woman with an astonishly be..
Nona Vincent
by Henry JamesNona Vincent is a short story by Henry James. Excerpts from the bookThe year before, in a big newspapery house, he had found himself next her at dinner, and they had converted the intensely material hour into a feast of reason. There was no motive for her asking him to come to see her but that she liked him, which it was the more agreeable to..
The Beldonald Holbein
by Henry JamesMrs. Munden had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretext as when she first intimated that it would be quite open to me-should I only care, as she called it, to throw the handkerchief-to paint her beautiful sister-in-law. I needn't go here more than is essential into the question of Mrs. Munden, who would really, by the way, be a story in hers..