Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award: Biography
One of the Best Books of 2012: The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, Boston Phoenix


A revelatory biography of the American master as told through the lens of his greatest novel.

Henry James (18431916) has had many biographers, but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the modern novel, combining elements of biography, criticism, and travelogue in re-creating the dramatic backstory of Jamess masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady (1881). Gorra, an eminent literary critic, shows how this novelthe scandalous story of the expatriate American heiress Isabel Archercame to be written in the first place. Traveling to Florence, Rome, Paris, and England, Gorra sheds new light on Jamess family, the European literary circlesGeorge Eliot, Flaubert, Turgenevin which James made his name, and the psychological forces that enabled him to create this most memorable of female protagonists. Appealing to readers of Menands The Metaphysical Club and McCulloughs The Greater Journey, Portrait of a Novel provides a brilliant account of the greatest American novel of expatriate life ever written. It becomes a piercing detective story on its own. 10 illustrations