The Ambassadors: Introduction by Sarah Churchwell (Everyman's Library Classics Series),New

Product DescriptionA new Everyman's Library hardcover edition of The Ambassadorsone of the great masterpieces of Henry Jamess late period, and the authors own favorite among his works.First published in 1903, the novel follows middleaged Lambert Strether as he is dispatched from Massachusetts to Paris by his wealthy fiance to rescue her son, Chad Newsome, from the corrupting influences of Europe and its wicked women. Once the mildmannered and inexperienced Strether arrives in Paris, however, Chad introduces him to a world that he finds refined and sophisticated, rather than debauched and base. Mrs. Newsome, waiting in Massachusetts, grows impatient and sends more ambassadors to retrieve her wayward men. But Strether has become especially enchanted by Chads female friends Madame de Vionnet and her daughter, Jeanne, and he begins to wonder if, all his life, he has missed out on what the wider world has to offer. Live all you can; its a mistake not to, he tells a friend in one of the most memorable scenes in this darkly comic, masterfully written story of liberation, selfdiscovery, and the meaning of living well.About the AuthorHENRY JAMES (18431916) was born in America but eventually settled in England and became a British citizen. A prolific writer of novels and short stories, he was famous for the psychological interiority of his work and his dramatizations of the culture clash between Americans and Europeans.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.IStrether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him bespeaking a room 'only if not noisy,' reply paid, was produced for the enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to that extent sound. The same secret principle, however, that had prompted Strether not absolutely to desire Waymarsh's presence at the dock, that had led him thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to make him feel he could still wait without disappointment. They would dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old Waymarshif not even, for that matter, to himselfthere was little fear that in the sequel they shouldn't see enough of each other. The principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctivethe fruit of a sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking, after so much separation, into his comrade's face, his business would be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the nearing steamer as the first 'note,' of Europe. Mixed with everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether's part, that it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in quite a sufficient degree.That note had been meanwhilesince the previous afternoon, thanks to this happier devicesuch a consciousness of personal freedom as he hadn't known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already, if headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with cool success. There were people on the ship with whom he had easily consortedso far as ease could up to now be imputed to himand who for the most part plunged straight into the current that set from the landingstage to London; there were others who had invited him to a tryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid for a 'look round' at the beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen away from every one alike, had kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in being, unlike himself, 'met,' and had even independently, unsociably, alone, without encounter or relapse