Fiction · 1898
The Turn of the Screw
A young governess takes charge of two children at a remote country house, and begins to see, on the tower and at the window, two figures she comes to believe are the ghosts of her predecessor and the master’s valet — and to believe that the children see them too. Henry James published the tale in 1898. Whether the ghosts are there at all has been argued ever since, which is what James intended.
The tale is given complete, with the Christmas Eve frame in which Douglas produces the governess’s manuscript and reads it aloud — the device that puts two removes between the reader and whatever happened at Bly.
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Part of The Gothic Library.
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About the author
1843–1916 · Victorian
Henry James (1843–1916) was born in New York City, the son of a theologian and brother of the philosopher William James, and educated in Europe and America. He settled in England in 1876 and became a British subject in 1915. Among his novels are Roderick Hudson, The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians, What Maisie Knew, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl; among his tales, Daisy Miller, The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw (1898).
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