“A deliberate, powerful, and horribly successful study of the magic of evil, of\u00a0the subtle influence over human hearts and minds of the sin with which this\u00a0world is accursed.” (The New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art)<\/p>\n
The first to enjoy this study, were the readers of\u00a0Collier\u2019s Weekly<\/i>, which\u00a0published\u00a0The Turn of the Screw<\/i>\u00a0between 27 January and 16 April 1898. The\u00a0quoted review, however, refers to the novella\u2019s first appearance as a book in\u00a0October 1898. A review that declared it worthy of being compared to Robert\u00a0Louis Stevenson’s\u00a0Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.<\/i>\u00a0Henry James would have loved to\u00a0read this flattery, especially because it gives nothing away, while it all the same\u00a0plants the flag of its anonymous author spot on : the first to have cracked the\u00a0case. But not the only one, and a similar review appeared nine days later\u00a0independently in a Detroit magazine.<\/p>\n
Just in case : this is the example to follow whenever you face the same\u00a0problem of suppressing the desire to show off, that caused me to lift the veil a\u00a0little higher than Henry James would have appreciated. But those things happen\u00a0when generations of experts fail to explain that a properly told story is, within\u00a0its context, all one needs to find out what exactly it is telling. Who should blame\u00a0me then, for assuming that nobody can find out\u00a0The Turn of the Screw<\/i>\u00a0 without\u00a0a guide?<\/p>\n
—<\/span><\/p>\n —<\/span><\/p>\n go to next chapter<\/a>\u00a0– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/span>\u00a0back to the previous chapter<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “A deliberate, powerful, and horribly successful study of the magic of evil, of\u00a0the subtle influence over human hearts and minds of the sin with which this\u00a0world is accursed.” (The New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art) The first … Continue reading