The Turn of the Screw

Oscar Wilde called James's chilling The Turn of the Screw a most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale. It tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, miles and flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care. But is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence, or something else entirely? The Turn of the Screw is James's great masterpiece of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension.

Part of a series of new Penguin Classics editions of Henry James's works, this edition contains a chronology, further reading, notes and an introduction by David Bromwich examining the carefully maintained ambiiguity of James's work and the inseparability of narrative from point of view.