PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Henry James (1843-1916) was born in New York and settled in Europe in 1875. He was a regular contributor of reviews, critical essays, and short stories to American periodicals. He is best known for his many novels of American and European character. Richard Lansdown is a Lecturer in English at James Cook University in Queensland Australia.
One of the least known of James' novels - and yet the only one that is uniformly American, Boston rejected it as a satire unflattering to their ego; in those days apparently Boston banning could break - not make - a book. Perhaps the American literary taste of the period could not relish the astringent quality of the book, the irony and the criticism of the American way of life. Today it reads as one of his most modern books, well worth this re-introduction, in a year when James appears to be again coming into his own. (Kirkus Reviews)
