The Bostonians

Regarded as one of his finest works, Henry James' ‘The Bostonians’ (1886) is a brilliant satire about the women’s rights movement in America.

Verena Tarrant is an inspirational feminist speaker, but her two disparate cousins are at loggerheads as they seek to control her future. Boston feminist Olive Chancellor hopes to turn Verena into a famous activist, while Basil Ransom, a southern lawyer, hopes to win Verena’s heart.

Fans of ´The Bostonians´ might want to watch the movie adaptation from 1984, starring Christopher Reeve and Vanessa Redgrave.

Henry James (1843-1916) was an American-born British author, and one of the founders of the school of realism in fiction. His inventive use of interior monologues and unreliable narrators brought complexity and depth to his work, making him hugely popular.

A prolific writer, he published numerous novels, articles, travel books, biographies and plays. Among his best-known works are ‘Daisy Miller’ (1879), ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ (1881), and ‘The Bostonians’ (1886).

Many of his stories have been adapted for TV and film, but it is his celebrated Gothic novella ‘The Turn of the Screw’ (1898), regarded as one of the greatest ghost stories ever written, that has been adapted more than any other. Most recently, the eponymous 2009 BBC TV series starring Michelle Dockery, and the Netflix series, ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ (2020).

James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916.