The Turn of the Screw

Overview

A selection of some of the most famous and terrifying ghost stories of all time from the acclaimed Henry James.

A young governess is sent to a great country house to care for two orphaned children. At first Flora and Miles seem to be model pupils but gradually the governess begins to suspect that something is very wrong with them. As she sets out to uncover the corrupt secrets hidden in the house, she is increasingly convinced that something evil is watching her. Several other of Henry James’s most gruesome horror stories are also included, among them The Jolly Corner, Owen Wingrave, The Private Life, The Real Right Thing, and Sir Edmund Orme.

Reviews

"The Turn of the Screw is the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read in any literature, ancient or modern."  —Independent

"We are afraid of something unnamed, of something, perhaps, in ourselves . . . Henry James . . . can still make us afraid of the dark."  —Virginia Woolf

"Henry James is as solitary in the history of the novel as Shakespeare is in the history of poetry."  —Graham Greene

"A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale."  —Oscar Wilde

"It really does turn your blood cold."  —Colm Tóibín

"Technically, he is extraordinarily brilliant, and stylistically he’s wonderful."  —David Lodge

"[James] is the most intelligent man of his generation."  —T. S. Eliot

Author Biography

Henry James (1843–1916) was a noted novelist and literary critic, as well as a pioneer in the genre of the short story. His works include the novels Roderick Hudson (1875) and The Wings of the Dove (1902), as well as the story The Beast in the Jungle (1903).