Victorian Era PDF EPUB Audio

What Maisie Knew

by Henry James

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 1897
Pages: 245

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Read by Elizabeth Klett · 8 h 50 min · 32 parts

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00 - Introduction
9:53
01 - Chapter 01
7:51
02 - Chapter 02
7:48
03 - Chapter 03
6:01
04 - Chapter 04
8:22
05 - Chapter 05
9:07
06 - Chapter 06
11:37
07 - Chapter 07
13:44
08 - Chapter 08
19:18
09 - Chapter 09
15:23
10 - Chapter 10
12:52
11 - Chapter 11
18:31
12 - Chapter 12
18:14
13 - Chapter 13
15:22
14 - Chapter 14
16:45
15 - Chapter 15
16:15
16 - Chapter 16
17:01
17 - Chapter 17
17:33
18 - Chapter 18
17:40
19 - Chapter 19
23:14
20 - Chapter 20
28:54
21 - Chapter 21
20:16
22 - Chapter 22
12:55
23 - Chapter 23
15:51
24 - Chapter 24
20:10
25 - Chapter 25
18:34
26 - Chapter 26
20:14
27 - Chapter 27
13:48
28 - Chapter 28
15:19
29 - Chapter 29
20:28
30 - Chapter 30
25:44
31 - Chapter 31
35:29

What Maisie Knew (1897) is a public domain work.

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About this book

What Maisie Knew is a novel by Henry James, first serialised in the Chap Book and the New Review during 1897 and published in book form the same year. It is one of the central novels of his experimental middle period, alongside The Spoils of Poynton and The Awkward Age, and one of the most original treatments in nineteenth century English fiction of a child as the observer of adult disorder.

Maisie Farange is the young daughter of Beale and Ida Farange, a wealthy English couple who have divorced bitterly. The court has ruled that Maisie will spend alternating six month periods with each parent. The novel follows what happens to Maisie across the next several years as both her parents remarry, divorce again, take various lovers, and shuffle Maisie between households according to whichever arrangement is currently most convenient or most spiteful. Maisie acquires a series of governesses, a stepmother who briefly cares about her, a stepfather who becomes the closest thing to a real parent she has, and a slow accumulating understanding of the moral character of the various adults whose lives have been imposed on hers.

What makes the book extraordinary is the technical achievement of telling the story almost entirely from Maisie's developing point of view, beginning when she is six and continuing into her early adolescence. James does not write in a child's voice. He writes in his own sophisticated adult voice but limits himself rigorously to what Maisie can actually see and understand at each stage. The result is a novel in which the reader gradually understands more than Maisie can articulate, and in which the child's slowly developing moral sense becomes the centre of the book. The famous ending, where Maisie must finally choose what she wants, is one of the most quietly devastating moments in late Victorian fiction.

The novel runs about three hundred pages and is one of the most demanding of the middle period works. For readers who have liked The Spoils of Poynton or The Awkward Age, this is the next book to attempt. It pairs naturally with The Pupil, the short story that handles similar material at much shorter length, and with the later novella The Turn of the Screw.

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.