Book description
Concerned that her son Chad may have become involved with a woman of
dubious reputation, the formidable Mrs Newsome sends her ?ambassador?
Strether from Massachusetts to Paris to extricate him. Strether?s
mission, however, is gradually undermined as he falls under the spell of
the city and finds Chad refined rather than corrupted by its influence
and that of his charming companion, the comtesse de Vionnet. As the
summer wears on, Mrs Newsome comes to the conclusion that she must send
another envoy to Paris to confront the errant Chad, and a Strether whose
view of the world has changed profoundly. James?s favourite novel and
one of the greatest of his late works, The Ambassadors is a subtle and
often witty exploration of different American responses to a European
environment.
Henry James was born in 1843 in new York, with Scottish and Irish
ancestry. Having studied in New York and Europe, he became a lawyer,
and started writing in 1865. Spending time in Paris he knew Flaubert
and Turgenev, before moving to London and then Sussex.
Harry Levin has written on James Joyce and Henry James for the
Penguin Classics.
