Table of Contents
Introduction ix
The Text of The Turn of the Screw 3
Compositional History 93
Textual Notes 96
Contexts 103
James, The Ghost Story, and The Supernatural 105
To Thomas Sergeant Perry [So Much for Cora] Henry James 105
A Notebook Entry [Subject for a Ghost-Story] 106
A Notebook Entry [Another Theme of the Same Kind] 107
From a Preface [The Whole Fairy-Tale Side of Life] 107
To Theodate Pope Riddle [Beneath Comment or Criticism] 112
James on The Turn of The Screw 115
A Notebook Entry [Idea of a Servant Suspected] Henry James 115
A Notebook Entry [Grose] 115
A Notebook Entry [Note Here the Ghost-Story] 116
To Alice [Mrs. William] James [Finished My Little Book] 116
To A. C. Benson [Of the Ghostly and Ghastly] 117
To Paul Bourget [A Little Volume Just Published] 118
To Dr. Waldstein [My Bogey-Tale Dealt with Things So Hideous] 119
To H. G. Wells [The Thing Is Essentially a Pot-Boiler] 120
To F. W. H. Myers [The TV of the S. Is a Very Mechanical Matter] 121
To W. D. Howells [Another Duplex Book Like the "Two Magics"] 122
A Notebook Entry [Something as Simple as The Turn of the Screw] 124
To W. D. Howells [To Concoct a "Ghost" of Any Freshness] 125
Preface to the New York Edition [An Exercise of the Imagination] 127
Other Possible Sources for The Turn of The Screw 135
The Genesis of "The Turn of the Screw" Robert Lee Wolff 135
Psychical Research and "The Turn of the Screw" Francis X. Roellinger, Jr. 137
The Turn of the Screw and Alice James Oscar Cargill 141
[Moral Anxiety, Vulgar Sexuality, and the Victorian Governess] Mary Poovey 146
[Pure and Strangely Erotic: The Victorian Child] James R. Kincaid 153
Adaptations and Illustrations 161
Illustration in Collier's Weekly (February 12, 1898) Eric Pape 164
Illustration in Collier's Weekly (March 5, 1898) 165
Illustration in Collier's Weekly(February 12, 1898) John La Farge 166
At a House in Hurley Street Charles Demuth 167
The Governess First Sees the Ghost of Peter Quint 167
Flora and the Governess 168
The Governess, Mrs. Grose and the Children 168
Miles and the Governess 169
The Innocents Film Stills 169
Los Angeles Opera Britten's The Turn of the Screw (2011) 170
Glyndebourne Festival Opera Britten's The Turn of the Screw (2014) 171
Britten's The Turn of the Screw (2011) 171
Selected Stage and Screen Adaptations, 1950-2020 172
Criticism 175
Early Reactions: 1898-1926 177
The New York Times Magic of Evil and Love 177
Joseph Conrad To Ford Madox Ford [An Intellectual Thrill] 178
New York Tribune A Masterpiece Mr. Henry James 178
To Oliver Lodge [The Little Boy Feels Pederastic Passion] F. W. H. Myers 180
The Outlook [The Story Is Distinctly Repulsive] 180
To the Hon. A. E. Bontine [A Kind of Phosphorescent Trail] Joseph Conrad 181
Academy Portraits: Mr. Henry James Henry Harland 181
The Bookman Mr. James's New Book 182
Droch Henry James as a Ghost Raiser 183
On Books at Christmas John D. Barry 184
The American Monthly Review of Reviews Two Volumes Henry James 184
The Independent [The Most Hopelessly Evil Story] 185
Oscar Wilde To Robert Ross [Wonderful, Lurid, Poisonous] 185
The Chautauquan [Psychic Phenomena] 186
[Facts, or Delusions] Oliver Elton 186
Henry James, and the Ghostly A. R. Orage 187
[Henry James's Ghosts] Virginia Woolf 188
[Merely Declining to Think About Homosex] E. M. Forster 189
Major and Recent Criticism 191
A Pre-Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw Harold C. Goddard 191
Henry James to the Ruminant Reader: The Turn of the Screw Edna Kenton 199
The Ambiguity of Henry James Edmund Wilson 201
The Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw Robert B. Heilman 203
Introduction to Stories of the Supernatural Leon Edel 210
From The Secret of Narrative Tzvetan Todorov 212
Turning the Screw of Interpretation Shoshana Felman 215
James: Twists of the Governess Henry Sussman 231
Recognition: Servant in the Ending Bruce Robbins 241
Screwing with Children in Henry James Ellis Hanson 244
The Turn of the Screw, or: the Dispossessed Hearts of Little Gentlemen Eric Haralson 252
Turning the Screw Again: The Precocious Colonial Child in Henry James's Story Paul Sharrad 260
An Innocence Worse Than Evil in The Turn of the Screw Michelle H. Phillips 267
Material Turns of the Screw: The Collier's Weekly Serialization of The Turn of the Screw (1898) Kirsten MacLeod 276
A Chronology Henry James 285
Suggestions for Further Reading 289