Travel with Close Readings: ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ by Henry James
About this episode
The episode discusses Henry James's 'The Portrait of a Lady' and its protagonist Isabel Archer, exploring the novel's themes and revisions.
In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James borrows from Eliot, Austen, folktales and potboilers, but ‘the thing that he took from nowhere was Isabel Archer’. James transformed the 19th-century novel through his evocation of Isabel, a woman who wants and suffers in a profoundly new (and American) way. Deborah Friedell and Colm Toíbín join Tom to discuss the novel that established Henry James as ‘the Master’. They dissect James’s and his characters’ complicated motivations, the significance of his 1905-6 revisions, and the ways in which a ‘primitive plot’ irrupts in a painstakingly subtle and stylish novel. Get 50% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings with the code SUMMER50 at checkout when you sign up here: https://lrb.me/crtravelna Find our full Close Readings travel playlist here: https://lrb.me/crtravelwebna Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
People in this episode
Host: Tom
Guests: Deborah Friedell, Colm Toíbín
Topics covered
- literature
- Henry James
- character analysis
- 19th-century novel
- American literature
Keywords
- Henry James
- Isabel Archer
- literary analysis
- 19th-century literature
- Close Readings
Sponsors
Close Readings
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: The Portrait of a Lady
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