HENRY JAMES (1843–1916) wrote some twenty novels, including Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Ambassadors, in addition to many short stories, plays, and books of criticism, autobiography, and travel.

MICHAEL GORRA is a professor of English at Smith College and the author of Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece.

PHILIP HORNE is a professor of English at University College London. He is an authority on nineteenth-century literature, specifically the works of Charles Dickens and Henry James.

A wonderful new selection of Henry James’s short stories, edited by Pulitzer Prize–nominated James biographer Michael Gorra

This volume gathers seven of the very best of Henry James’s short stories, all exploring the relationship between art and life. In the title story, “The Aspern Papers,” a critic is determined to get his hands on a great poet’s papers hidden in a faded Venetian house—no mater what the human cost. “The Author of Beltraffio,” “The Lesson of the Master,” and “The Figure in the Carpet” all focus on naive young men’s unsettling encounters with their literary heroes. In “The Middle Years,” a dying novelist begins to glimpse his own potential, while “The Real Thing” and “Greville Fane” explore the tension between artistic and commercial success. These fables of the creative life reveal James at his ironic, provocative best.