The Turn of the Screw
The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly. In October 1898, it was collected in The Two Magics, published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. The novella follows a governess who, caring for two children at a remote estate, becomes convinced that the grounds are haunted. The Turn of the Screw is considered a work of both Gothic and horror fiction.
In the century following its publication, critical analysis of the novella has undergone several major transformations. Initial reviews regarded it only as a frightening ghost story, but, in the 1930s, some critics suggested that the supernatural elements were figments of the governess' imagination. In the early 1970s, the influence of structuralism resulted in an acknowledgement that the text's ambiguity was its key feature. Later approaches incorporated Marxist and feminist thinking.
The novella has been adapted numerous times, including a Broadway play (1950), a chamber opera (1954), two films (The Innocents in 1961 and The Turning in 2020), and a miniseries by Netflix (2020).
Excerpted from The Turn of the Screw on Wikipedia.
The Turn of the Screw
| Author | Henry James |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Genre | Ghost stories, Gothic Fiction, Horror Novels |
| Copyright | Public domain worldwide. |
| Book cover | Image: Eric Pape | wikimedia |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | Google-digitized |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive Reader: Elizabeth Klett 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 |
| Read online | The Turn of the Screw |
