JAMES AND THE CHILDREN

A Consideration of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw

by Eli Siegel

Edited by Martha Baird

Hugh Kenner wrote in Poetry magazine:

“It is a reading so careful and candid it reduces most previous discussion to wilful evasiveness. The oddness of a literary critic constantly asking us to think about real children can suggest how odd is the criticism we’re accustomed to.”

Critic Robert B. Heilman wrote:

“It is an immense relief to find someone as good as Siegel is, refusing the fashionable explanation of the story, and looking at what it actually says. I like the way in which he constantly points out how the governess goofs or the tone goes awry, something which in my own treatment I failed to do.”

Noah Gordon, publisher of the journal Psychiatric Opinion, wrote:

“I believe it will be of particular interest to child psychiatrists. It enabled me to reread The Turn of the Screw with new shocks of recognition.…Siegel is a critic who assesses style with a poet’s ear and characterization with a philosopher’s eye.”

Noah Gordon was also publisher of the Journal of Human Stress, science editor of the Boston Herald, and a noted novelist.

Read Chapter 1, “Careful Hovering”

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ISBN 0-910492-08-5 (cloth)
ISBN 0-910492-22-0 (paper)