Research Catalog

Title

What Maisie knew / Henry James ; edited with an introduction and notes by Paul Theroux ; with additional notes by Patricia Crick.

Author

James, Henry, 1843-1916

Publication

Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Penguin Books, c1985.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Theroux, Paul

Description

274 p.; 19 cm.

Summary

With an Introduction by Pat Righelato, University of Reading The child of parents who divorce, remarry and then embark on adulterous affairs, Maisie Farange survives by her intelligence and spirit. For all its sombre theme of childhood innocence exposed to a corrupted adult world, this novel is one of James's comic masterpieces. The outrageous behaviour of the characters on the seedy fringes of the English upper class is conveyed with wit and relish. The dual perspective of a sophisticated narrator richly appreciative of the absurdities of the adult sexual merry-go-round and the candid vision of Maisie, 'rebounding' from one parent to another like a 'shuttlecock', together create an 'associational magic'. Strangely, unexpectedly, from so much that is tawdry, comes a tale of moral energy and subtlety. James's foresight was in understanding the modernity of his subject, which is even more relevant today in the twenty-first century.

Series Statement

Penguin classics

Uniform Title

Penguin classics.

Subject

• Children of divorced parents > Fiction
• Remarried people > Fiction
• Governesses > Fiction
• Girls > Fiction

Genre/Form

• Domestic fiction.
• Bildungsromans
• Domestic fiction
• Fiction
• Bildungsromans.
• Fiction.

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: p. 267-274.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

0140432485 (pbk.) :

LCCN

^^^86110186^

OCLC

• 13702719
• SCSB-11641726

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library