Henry James has 34 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 54 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 296 ratings. The most-rated is The Turn of the Screw.
The Turn of the Screw
Summary
Experience a frightening cornerstone of Gothic fiction in this InAudio presentation of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. On a quiet Christmas Eve, a governess’ manuscript detailing her encounters with the supernatural is read. She tells the story of moving into an estate to take care of two children and becoming slowly aware that the area is overrun with ghosts of the previous inhabitants - and that the children are aware that these ghosts exist. The Turn of the Screw tells the story of the governess’ descent into fear as she believes she observes more of the supernatural, but it also poses an interesting dilemma of interpretation to the listener - are there really ghosts, or are they figments of the governess’ imagination? In a master work of suspense, Henry James tells a tale that will leave listeners on the edge of their seats, pondering the true interpretation of the governess’ manuscript.
Public Domain (P)2020 InAudio
The Turn of the Screw
Summary
Released in our new Young Adult Classics format, Henry James's classic ghost story is a masterpiece of the supernatural. The tale is taken from the diary of a governess, who describes her mounting sense of paranoia at the relationship between her two wards and the ghostly figures that haunt the estate. Menacing, ambiguous and haunted by a pervading sense of evil, The Turn of the Screw is one of the most powerful and enduring tales of the 19th century. Emma Fielding gives a compelling reading of a story in which nothing is certain, and madness lurks around every corner.
Public Domain (P)2009 Naxos Audiobooks
The Ambassadors
Summary
In the second novel of Henry James' celebrated late period, American Lambert Strether is sent to Paris on behalf of Mrs. Newsome, his fiancée, to collect her son, Chad. When Strether finds Chad, he discovers an altered man and becomes introduced to a free and unconventional style of life that soon intoxicates him. His views begin to change; the morality of Woollett, his hometown, becomes foreign, and the "ambassador" loses sight of his mission.... Part tragedy, part comedy, The Ambassadors is a rewarding portrait about one man's late awakening. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
Public Domain (P)2017 Naxos AudioBooks
Julia Bride
Summary
Henry James's story Julia Bride appeared in Harper's magazine in 1908. The similarity to Edith Wharton’s novel The House of Mirth, published three years earlier, is obvious, like the circumstances facing Wharton’s heroine Lily Bart and James’s Julia Bride. Julia Bride is being courted by Basil French, the son of a wealthy but very traditional New York family. He wants to know more about her background, but she is reluctant to let him know that she has been engaged six times, and that her mother has been divorced twice and is likely heading for a third one. Julia is caught between America’s class mobility, social fluidity and personal freedoms, and the rigid ethics, snobbery, and social codes that the east coast elite had imported from Europe.
Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks
What Maisie Knew
Summary
Following a violent and messy divorce, young Maisie Farange floats back and forth between her parents, Beale and Ida, who use her as a weapon to torment each other in their ongoing, internecine war. Eventually the parents both remarry, and it becomes clear that the new spouses care more for Maisie than her own parents. Beale and Ida soon embark on a series of extramarital affairs, leaving Maisie in the care of the new step-parents, who begin their own affair with each other. What Maisie Knew is a remarkable tour de force from James's late-middle period, and an insightful look at the psyche of a child who is thrust into the adult world of drama and failed relationships. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Public Domain (P)2019 Naxos AudioBooks
The Portrait of a Lady
Summary
Perhaps the most appealing of all the feminine "vessels of consciousness" that grace the novels of Henry James, Isabel Archer is a young American orphan who receives an inheritance from an uncle. Taken under her aunt's wings, she meets Madame Merle, her aunt's worldly friend, who instills in her the sense of European sophistication, a trait which comes to overpower her own common sense. Isabel marries widower Gilbert Osmond, a friend of Madame Merle, who projects refined tastes and intellectual detachment. She is utterly captivated by Osmond's languid charm. He is thrilled to have his superior prize. But in the end, Isabel discovers that her husband and Madame Merle are both exemplars of an appalling, complex depravity that has become the central issue in her life. Dutch-born American actress Nina Foch became famous in the 1940s playing cool, aloof, and often foreign women of sophistication. She played leading roles in many motion pictures classics, including The Ten Commandments, Spartacus, and An American in Paris.
Public Domain (P)1992, 2014 Dove Audio, Phoenix Books
The Golden Bowl
Summary
Wealthy Maggie Verver has everything she could ever ask for - except a husband and a title. While in Italy, acquiring art for his museum back in the States, Maggie’s millionaire father, Adam, decides to remedy this and acquire a husband for Maggie. Enter Prince Amerigo, of a titled but now poor aristocratic Florentine family. Amerigo is the perfect candidate. Delighted, Maggie then reciprocates by choosing a partner for her widower father: childhood friend Charlotte Stant. The stage is set, and what unfolds is a deep and gripping exploration of fidelity and the politics of love and marriage. Published in 1904, The Golden Bowl displays Henry James at his finest: James weaves scene upon scene, set piece upon set piece, into a seamless whole, through a richly dense tapestry of beautiful, flowing prose. Along with The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, it constitutes James’ final and most rewarding phase as a novelist. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
Public Domain (P)2018 Naxos AudioBooks
The Henry James BBC Radio Drama Collection
Summary
The definitive collection of full-cast BBC radio dramatisations of Henry James’ classic novels - plus a bonus documentary about his life and work.
One of the greatest and most influential American novelists, Henry James is loved for his compelling storytelling, vividly realised characters and perceptive exploration of the shifting relationships between Europeans and Americans. But he also possessed extraordinary insights into the secrets of the human heart, as shown in the 10 dramas in this collection.
Roderick Hudson explores how love and obsession intermingle as old and new worlds collide; The American mixes humour and heartache in a tale of a self-made millionaire and an aristocratic young Frenchwoman; and desire and propriety clash in Daisy Miller when Frederick Winterbourne meets the beautiful, free-spirited Daisy. Pursued by two suitors, Isabel Archer longs for freedom in The Portrait of a Lady while a literary editor insinuates himself into the lives of an elderly spinster and her niece in The Aspern Papers.
What Maisie Knew is James’ classic tale of divorce seen through a child’s eyes while Gothic ghost story The Turn of the Screw tells the terrifying tale of a governess who tries to protect two young children from the forces of evil. The Wings of the Dove is a heartbreaking story of a doomed love triangle; dark comedy The Ambassadors features yearning and betrayal in aristocratic Paris; and The Golden Bowl explores two marriages and the secret that threatens to tear them apart.
The casts of these sweeping radio dramas include Kate Hudson, Kate Phillips, Emma Cunniffe, Jodie Comer, Henry Goodman and Toby Jones, with John Lynch as Henry James. Also featured is a bonus programme, The Master, in which Sarah Churchwell discusses James’ life and novels with author Colm Tóibin and biographer Hermione Lee.
©2019 BBC Worldwide Ltd (P)2019 BBC Worldwide Ltd
The Turn of the Screw
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
This Penguin Classic is performed by Tuppence Middleton, star of Sense8, also known for her role in Downton Abbey A chilling ghost story, wrought with tantalising ambiguity, this definitive recording of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw is edited with an introduction by David Bromwich.
In what Henry James called a 'trap for the unwary', The Turn of the Screw tells of a nameless young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care. But is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence or something else entirely? The Turn of the Screw is James's great masterpiece of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension and has influenced subsequent ghost stories and films such as The Innocents, starring Deborah Kerr, and The Others, starring Nicole Kidman.
Henry James (1843-1916) son of a prominent theologian, and brother to the philosopher William James, was one of the most celebrated novelists of the fin-de-siècle. In addition to many short stories, plays, books of criticism, biography and autobiography, and much travel writing, he wrote some twenty novels. His novella Daisy Miller (1878) established him as a literary figure on both sides of the Atlantic, and his other novels in Penguin Classics include Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Awkward Age (1899), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904).
Public Domain (P)2019 Penguin Audio
![Cover art for La Edad Madura [The Mature Age]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51WOcGJZyuL._SL500_.jpg)
La Edad Madura [The Mature Age]
Summary
Henry James (1843-1916) Henry James nació en Nueva York, el 15 de abril de 1843. Los James eran una familia de muy buena posición social y Henry era el hermano más joven del econocido filósofo y psicólogo William James. Henry Jamers vivió en Nueva York, Londres, París y Ginebra, y en 1875 se estableció en Inglaterra. En Paris, Henry conoció a Goncourt, a Maupassant, a Balzac; y se hizo amigo del escritor ruso Turgueniev. En 1881 escribió Retrato de una Dama, una de sus obras maestras, un análisis de los norteamericanos expatriados en Europa; y en 1898, Otra Vuelta de Tuerca, para muchos, la culminación de su obra. James fue uno de los mayores escritores epistolares de todos los tiempos. Existen más de 10,000 cartas personales suyas, y se han publicado más de 3,000. Entre sus correspondientes se encuentran Robert Louis Stevenson y Joseph Conrad. También escribió 20 novelas, 112 cuentos, 12 obras de teatro, e infinidad de crónicas de viaje, artículos y notas periodísticas. Henry James falleció en Londres, el 28 de febrero de 1916, poco tiempo después de haber sido condecorado por el Rey Jorge V. Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.
©2011 NEAR, S.A. (P)2011 NEAR, S.A.
Daisy Miller
Summary
Daisy Miller is the story of a beautiful, unconventional American girl who becomes the fascination of Frederick Winterbourne, a sophisticated compatriot. His pursuit of her is hampered by her flirtatiousness and flagrant disregard for the customs and behavior of the other expatriates when they meet in Switzerland and Italy. Henry James used Daisy's story to exemplify how he believed Europeans and Americans felt about each other, and more generally the prejudices common in the culture at that time between wealthy American industrialists and European aristocracy. Daisy Miller was an immediate and widespread popular success for James, despite some criticism that the story was "an outrage on American girlhood". The story continues to be one of James' most popular works, along with The Turn of the Screw and The Portrait of a Lady. This narration is from the original text which was published in 1879. In 1909 Henry James published a second version of Daisy Miller, which, in spite of his preferring it, never had the critical or commercial acclaim of the earlier version.
Public Domain (P)2017 Kitty Hendrix
Portrait of a Lady
Summary
An American heiress newly arrived in Europe, Isabel Archer does not look to a man to furnish her with her destiny; instead she desires, with grace and courage, to find it herself. Two eligible suitors approach her and are refused. She then becomes utterly captivated by the languid charms of Gilbert Osmond. To him, she represents a superior prize worth at least seventy thousand pounds; through him, she faces a tragic choice.
©2011 Talking Classics (P)2011 De Agostini UK 2010
The Aspern Papers
Summary
The Aspern Papers, one of Henry James best-known shorter works, is based on a story he heard about a collector of Shelley's manuscripts who attempted to acquire valuable letters from a mysterious old woman living in Florence. Set in beautiful Venice, James' elegant tale of suspense and romance takes the reader down the canals and inner chambers of a bygone era.
(P)2006 BMA Studios
The Portrait of a Lady
Summary
“Things are always different than what they might be.... If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.” Isabel Archer is a young woman who has inherited a large sum of money after the death of her father. She is invited to visit her aunt and uncle’s estate in London, where she is greeted by a cast of eclectic neighbors, many of whom offer her marriage very quickly due to her status. Isabel is set on maintaining independence though and refuses several offers of marriage as she lives in pursuit of her destiny. Eventually, she does fall prey to the people trying to gain her fortune and settles into an unhappy marriage with an egotistical man named Gilbert Osmond. The rest of her tale plays out sadly, with her stepdaughter being pursued by one of her own prior suitors, a selfish husband scheming to take control of her wealth, and a constant pull between all of the people who feel they have a claim to a bit of Isabel’s life and fortune. The Portrait of a Lady is one of Henry James’ most popular works and was a milestone work for its successful portrayal of in-depth motivation and humanity. Henry James’ masterful characterization of Isabel has served as inspiration for a century’s worth of introspective and complex characters.
Public Domain (P)2021 InAudio