Selected Short Stories

According to the introduction, the four stories encapsulate the author’s style and evolution.
The first story revolves around a love of myth and beauty.
In The Last of the Valerii, an Italian count has married a wealthy and beautiful American heiress, yet falls in love with a statue of Juno unearthed on his estate.
The narrative is related by a character who seems to stand in for the author, watching with amusement, wonder, and keen interest as a living being falls in love with a statue.
In The Real Thing, an artist who routinely works as a book illustrator is approached by a genteel couple fallen on hard times.
They ask to serve as models for the artist, who initially agrees, but soon realizes that real life is one thing, and a figure in an artistic representation is quite another.
The story is thus entirely constructed around the tension between real life and artistic expression, which is itself the offspring of the imagination.
The Lesson of the Master, the least successful of the stories, takes duplicity as its subject.
A young writer falls in love with a young woman, but is persuaded by an older writer to devote himself entirely to art: marriage or any strong romantic attachment are, after all, disruptive forces, compelling one to confront the prosaic nature of ordinary life.
Upon returning from an extended journey to Italy, the young writer discovers that his “master” has married the young woman: it was all a ruse.
Finally, the last story, Daisy Miller, is set in continental Europe, and specifically in Rome.
Several of the author’s signature themes are present: Americans abroad; an independent yet naive young American woman; the corrupting Italian; and the smitten young lover.
The settings are those of the upper middle class traveling abroad, and a Rome fraught with malarial fevers, however captivating in the remnants of a great civilization.
The contrast between American society—uncouth yet wholesome—and European, particularly Italian, society—decadent yet the heir to a grand culture—is unmistakable.
James’s style is invariably fascinating, at times convoluted, yet richly evocative.
In particular, it is the descriptions of nature, cities, and settings that constitute the author’s greatest strength, whereas the dialogue often proves tedious and predictable.