Coming of Age PDF EPUB Audio

Confidence

by Henry James

Pages: 210

Read online EPUB Download Save

Listen to Confidence Audiobook Free

7 h 46 min · 30 parts

Open the player

Chapter I
25:44
Chapter II
11:29
Chapter III
19:01
Chapter IV
8:46
Chapter V
9:04
Chapter VI
9:36
Chapter VII
10:25
Chapter VIII
14:52
Chapter IX
9:58
Chapter X
17:26
Chapter XI
16:13
Chapter XII
18:44
Chapter XIII
7:46
Chapter XIV
18:45
Chapter XV
18:36
Chapter XVI
25:08
Chapter XVII
20:38
Chapter XVIII
4:42
Chapter XIX
21:43
Chapter XX
12:49
Chapter XXI
16:59
Chapter XXII
8:47
Chapter XXIII
18:27
Chapter XXIV
15:33
Chapter XXV
15:22
Chapter XXVI
18:58
Chapter XXVII
19:16
Chapter XXVIII
18:21
Chapter XXIX
20:08
Chapter XXX
12:48

Confidence (1880) is a public domain work.

The audio edition streams in the page. There is no audio file to download.

Browse all free audiobooks

About this book

Confidence is a short novel by Henry James, first serialised in Scribner's Monthly from 1879 to 1880 and published in book form in 1880. It is one of his lesser known early novels, sitting between The Europeans and Washington Square. James himself was not entirely happy with it and left some of its weaker elements behind as he moved into the major work of the early 1880s.

The novel follows two friends, Bernard Longueville and Gordon Wright. Gordon is a serious young American with an interest in scientific subjects who is considering a marriage and asks his more worldly friend Bernard to look over the young woman and offer an honest opinion. Bernard does so. He returns a negative verdict. Gordon marries another woman instead. Then, years later, Bernard meets the woman he rejected, Angela Vivian, again and falls in love with her himself. The complications that follow involve Gordon's unhappy marriage and the question of whether Bernard's original judgement was honest or whether it was already shaped by feelings he did not admit to himself.

The book is interested in the way self knowledge is always belated. Bernard thinks he is being a good friend when he is actually being something else, and he only sees this years later. James is gentle on him but is not letting him off the hook. The same delayed recognition runs through Angela Vivian's behaviour. She knows more about what Bernard said years ago than she lets on, and her patience is one of the strangely satisfying things in the book.

The novel reads quickly compared with the late work. The plot moves and the characters are easy to follow. James later thought the European settings were used too thinly here and the central premise required a more careful working out than he gave it. As a transitional book, Confidence is interesting now mostly to James readers tracing his development. It pairs naturally with The Europeans, which is shorter and stronger, and with Washington Square, which is the book where his early style fully arrives.

Show all 30 chapters

About the author

Henry James

Henry James was an American-British writer and a master of the psychological novel. Works such as The Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw, and The Ambassadors explore consciousness, society, and the clash between American and European life.

All 113 books by Henry James