Books with title The Awkward Age

Save when it happened to rain Vanderbank always walked home, but he usually took ahansom when the rain was moderate and adopted the preference of the philosopher whenit was heavy. On this occasion he therefore recognised as the servant opened the door acongruity between the weather and the “four-wheeler” that, in the empty street, under theglazed radiance, waited and trickled and blackly glittered. The butler mentioned it as onsuch a wild night the only thing they could get, and Vanderbank, having replied that it wasexactly what would do best, prepared in the doorway to put up his umbrella and dashdown to it. At this moment he heard his name pronounced from behind and on turningfound himself joined by the elderly fellow guest with whom he had talked after dinner andabout whom later on upstairs he had sounded his hostess. It was at present a clear questionof how this amiable, this apparently unassertive person should get home—of the possibilityof the other cab for which even now one of the footmen, with a whistle to his lips, cranedout his head and listened through the storm. Mr. Longdon wondered to Vanderbank if theircourse might by any chance be the same; which led our young friend immediately toexpress a readiness to see him safely in any direction that should accommodate him. As thefootman’s whistle spent itself in vain they got together into the four-wheeler, where at theend of a few moments more Vanderbank became conscious of having proposed his ownrooms as a wind-up to their drive. Wouldn’t that be a better finish of the evening than justseparating in the wet? He liked his new acquaintance, who struck him as in a mannerclinging to him, who was staying at an hotel presumably at that hour dismal, and who,confessing with easy humility to a connexion positively timid with a club at which onecouldn’t have a visitor, accepted his invitation under pressure. Vanderbank, when theyarrived, was amused at the air of added extravagance with which he said he would keep thecab: he so clearly enjoyed to that extent the sense of making a night of it. “You young men, Ibelieve, keep them for hours, eh? At least they did in my time,” he laughed—“the wild ones!But I think of them as all wild then. I dare say that when one settles in town one learns howto manage; only I’m afraid, you know, that I’ve got completely out of it. I do feel really quitemouldy. It’s a matter of thirty years—!”“Since you’ve been in London?”

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Making her debut in London society, Nanda Brookenham is being groomed for the marriage market. Thrust suddenly into the superficial circle that surrounds her mother, the innocent but independent-minded young woman even finds herself in competition with Mrs Brookenham for the affection of the man she admires. Only an elderly bachelor, Mr Longdon, is immune to this world of scheming, and determines to rescue Nanda from its influences out of loyalty to the deep love he once felt for her grandmother. In The Awkward Age (1899), Henry James explores the English character, and the clash between old and new money with a light and subtly ironic touch to create a devastating critique of society and its machinations.

e in question at all, and that has condemned the freedom of the circle to be self- conscious, compunctious, on the whole much more timid than brave--the consequent muddle, if the term be not too gross, representing meanwhile a great inconvenience for life, but, as I found myself feeling, an immense promise, a much greater one than on the "foreign" showing, for the painted picture of life. Beyond which let me add that here immediately is a prime specimen of the way in which the obscurer, the lurking relations of a motive apparently simple, always in wait for their spring, may by seizing their chance for it send simplicity flying. Poor Nanda's little case, and her mother's, and Mr. Longdon's and Vanderbank's and Mitchy's, to say nothing of that of the others, has only to catch a reflected light from over the Channel in order to double at once its appeal to the imagination. (I am considering all these matters, I need scarce say, only as they are concerned with that faculty. With a relation NOT imaginative to his

It comes back to me, the whole "job," as wonderfully amusing and delightfully difficult from the first; since amusement deeply abides, I think, in any artistic attempt the basis and groundwork of which are conscious of a particular firmness. On that hard fine floor the element of execution feels it may more or less confidently DANCE; in which case puzzling questions, sharp obstacles, dangers of detail, may come up for it by the dozen without breaking its heart or shaking its nerve. It is the difficulty produced by the loose foundation or the vague scheme that breaks the heart—when a luckless fatuity has over-persuaded an author of the "saving" virtue of treatment.

Henry James OM (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American-British author regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of renowned philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.He is best known for a number of novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between emigre Americans, English people, and continental Europeans. Examples of such novels include The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. His later works were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often made use of a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to impressionist painting.James also published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man and eventually settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912 and 1916. (wikipedia.org)

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The Awkward Age is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in Harper's Weekly in 1898–1899 and then as a book later in 1899. Originally conceived as a brief, light story about the complications created in her family's social set by a young girl coming of age, the novel expanded into a general treatment of decadence and corruption in English fin de siècle life. James presents the novel almost entirely in dialogue, an experiment that adds to the immediacy of the scenes but also creates serious ambiguities about characters and their motives.

Mr. and Mrs. Edward Brookenham host an effete, rather corrupt social circle. They are the parents of worthless Harold and sweet but knowledgeable Nanda (age eighteen). Mr. Longdon attends one of their social functions and is amazed at how much Nanda resembles her grandmother, his long-ago love who married another man. Vanderbank, a young civil servant with little money, admires both Mrs. Brookenham (nicknamed "Mrs. Brook") and Nanda. Mrs. Brook seems to want an affair with "Van" but he appears more interested in Nanda.

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916), was born in New-York. His father was a writer in theology and his elder brother, William, was a philosopher. From 1865 he was a regular contributor of reviews and short stories to American periodicals. His first piece of fiction, “Watch and Ward”, appeared in 1871, followed by “Transatlantic Sketches” and “A Passionate Pilgrim” in 1875. His first important novel was “Roderick Hudson (1876). For more than 20 years he lived in London, and in 1898 moved to Lamb House, Rye, where his later novels were written. At first he was concerned with older civilization of Europe, and to this period belong his novels “Daisy Miller” (1879) and “Portrait of a Lady”(1881). In “The Tragic Muse” (1890), “The Spoils of Poynton”(1897), and “The Awkward Age” (1899), he analyses English character. With “The Wings of the Dove” (1902), “The Ambassadors” (1903), and “The Golden Bowl” (1904), he returned to the theme of the contrast of American and European character. In 1915, Henry James became a British subject, and in 1916 was awarded the OM.

The Awkward Age is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in Harper's Weekly in 1898–1899 and then as a book later in 1899. Originally conceived as a brief, light story about the complications created in her family's social set by a young girl coming of age, the novel expanded into a general treatment of decadence and corruption in English fin de siècle life. James presents the novel almost entirely in dialogue, an experiment that adds to the immediacy of the scenes but also creates serious ambiguities about characters and their motives.