Book description
Beautiful Kate Croy may have been left penniless by her relatives,
but her bold, ambitious nature ensures she will not succumb meekly to
a life of poverty. If the financial circumstances of Merton Densher,
the man she is passionately in love with, are not sufficient to secure
her future, perhaps her cunning will. So when Milly Theale arrives in
Europe from America, laden with wealth but also gravely ill, Kate sees
an opportunity to exploit her vulnerability and devises a plan that
will see her and Merton financially provided for. Her scheming is
flawed though, for it fails to take into account the inconstancies of
the human heart.
John Bayley's introduction examines the novel in the context of
James's other late, great works.
Born in 1843 in New York, Henry James was of Scottish and Irish
ancestry. He attended schools in New York, London, Paris and Geneva
before going to Law School at Harvard in 1862. He started writing short
stories and reviews for American journals in 1875 and then went on to
write some twenty highly popular and acclaimed novels, including The
Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians. He died in 1916.
