HENRY JAMES: AMBASSADORS [1963].

Description

We present an edition of the masterpiece of psychological prose by Henry James (1843-1916) – an American writer, critic and literary theorist, considered a precursor of modernism and a master of psychological analysis. It was published in 1963 in Warsaw by the State Publishing Institute (PIW) in the prestigious series “Novels of the 20th Century.”

“The Ambassadors” is one of the three most important masterpieces of James’ late work (along with “The Wings of the Dove” and “The Golden Bowl”). An American in Paris! How many interpretations – even musical – this theme has received! Paris – a symbol of civilization, art, love and decadence, a place where moral norms burst like a soap bubble, and America – puritanical, practical and in its own way innocent. The great writer Henry James, an insightful researcher of cross-cultural differences, builds on this contrast his story of a man who came from the New World to Paris to save a friend’s son from alleged corruption, and who found there the gentle and unexpected sweetness of mature life.

Henry James spent most of his life in Europe (mainly in England), becoming well acquainted with both cultures. Eventually, in 1915, as a protest against US neutrality in World War I, he took British citizenship. “The Ambassadors” is the pinnacle of his “second style” – characterized by extremely dense, multi-threaded prose and the technique of “limited point of view” (so-called “central consciousness”), which had a huge impact on the development of the psychological novel of the 20th century. The novel was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature (1911 and 1912).

This is the second edition – the first was published in 1958 in a translation by Maria Skibniewska, considered a classic of Polish translation. The presented copy is clean and preserved in very good condition. This is a must-have for the collector of modernist prose, the lover of James’s work and the bibliophile seeking a representative edition of one of the most important works of 20th century American literature.

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