Henry James (1843-1916) is one of America's premier writers of fiction. His famous novella The Turn of the Screw (1898), concerning the governess of two small children who thinks that her charges are being haunted by ghosts, brilliantly illustrates James's theory of the horror story: to suggest rather than state horror. A true psychological thriller as well as an acute study of obsession, The Turn of the Screw leaves open whether the children are being "corrupted" by malevolent spirits or by their neurotic governess. The Lesson of the Master is a piercing study of the life that art makes. When the tale's protagonist--a gifted young writer--meets and befriends a famous author he has long idolized, he is both repelled by and attracted to the artist's great secret: the emotional costs of a life dedicated to art. With extraordinary psychological insight and devastating wit, the novella asks the question of whether art is, ultimately, demeaning or ennobling for the artist, while capturing the ambiguities of a life devoted to art, and the choices artists must make.