The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers
Henry James
The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers pairs the two most famous shorter works of Henry James (1843-1916). The Turn of the Screw (1898) is the most analysed ghost story in English: a young governess at the remote house of Bly becomes convinced that the spirits of two dead servants are corrupting the children in her care, and the tale’s ambiguity between real haunting and the governess’s obsession has sustained critical war for a century. The Aspern Papers (1888), set in a decaying Venetian palazzo, follows a literary obsessive scheming to obtain the love letters of a dead Romantic poet from the ancient woman who keeps them. Both novellas show James’s mastery of narrated obsession and unreliable telling at the height of his middle period. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.
