The Portrait of a Lady Introduction by Peter Washington

Young Isabel Archer, a beautiful American, travels to Europe where her naivete - and recent inheritance - attracts many suitors. But despite her great promise, she falls victim to her own provincialism. Exposing the differences between the New and the Old Worlds, James's masterpiece examines the themes of freedom, sexuality, and betrayal.

Henry James was born in 1843 in New York City.  He traveled and studied extensively in New York, London, Paris and Geneva, and returned to the States in 1860, enrolling in Harvard Law School two years later.  By 1865 he had begun to contribute reviews and short stories to periodicals in earnest.  His first major piece of fiction, "Watch and Ward," was serialized in <b>The Atlantic Monthly</b> in 1870, and <b>Roderick Hudson</b>, his first major novel, was published in 1875.  James spent the following decades abroad, first visiting Paris, where he met Ivan Turgenev, Emile Zola and Gustave Flaubert, then settling in London, where he lived for over twenty years and wrote several novels, including <b>Washington Square</b>, <b>The Portrait of a Lady</b>, <b