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The Golden Bowl (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

by Henry James (Author), Gore Vidal (Introduction) "The Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was one of the Modern Romans who find by the Thames..." (more)
Key Phrases: Fanny Assingham, Eaton Square, Portland Place (more...)

3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Review
Novel by Henry James, published in 1904. Wealthy American widower Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie live in Europe, where they collect art and relish each other's company. Through the efforts of the manipulative Fanny Assingham, Maggie becomes engaged to Amerigo, an Italian prince in reduced circumstances, but remains blind to his rekindled affair with her longtime friend Charlotte Stant. Maggie and Amerigo marry, and later, after Charlotte and Adam have also wed, both spouses learn of the ongoing affair, though neither seeks a confrontation. Not until Maggie buys the gilded crystal bowl of the title as a birthday present for Adam does truth crack the veneer of propriety. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Review

"It is well written, the introduction useful, and the paperback price makes it acceptable for students."--Edna L Steeves, Univ. of Rhode Island
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Penguin Classics (May 7, 1985)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0140432353
ISBN-13: 978-0140432350
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #460,592 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
The Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was one of the Modern Romans who find by the Thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the Tiber. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Fanny Assingham, Eaton Square, Portland Place, Adam Verver, Charlotte Stant, Bob Assingham, Cadogan Place, Miss Lutches, Lady Castledean, Miss Bogle, Father Mitchell, Miss Stant, New York, Colonel Assingham, Maggie Verver, Golden Isles

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 16 books:

The Wings of the Dove by Henry James in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Front Matter (3)
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Front Matter (3)
The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics) by Henry James in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Front Matter (3)
The Wings of the Dove (Penguin Classics) by Henry James in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Front Matter (3)
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James in Front Matter (1), Front Matter (2), and Front Matter (3)

See all 16 books this book cites

100 books cite this book:

Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature by Martha C. Nussbaum on 34 pages
The Cambridge Companion to Henry James (Cambridge Companions to Literature) by Jonathan Freedman on 26 pages
Paternalism Incorporated: Fabies of American Fatherhood 1865-1940 by David Leverenz on 14 pages
The Other Henry James (New Americanists) by John CarlosRowe on 9 pages
The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind (Representation and Mind) by Cora Diamond on 9 pages

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Books on Related Topics (learn more)

Thinking in Henry James by Sharon Cameron

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	76% buy the item featured on this page: The Golden Bowl (Penguin Classics) 3.9 out of 5 stars (28) $10.20
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	7% buy The Ambassadors (Oxford World's Classics) 3.6 out of 5 stars (31) $8.95
	6% buy The Golden Bowl (Oxford World's Classics) $10.16

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Customer Reviews

28 Reviews

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
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Average Customer Review

3.9 out of 5 stars (28 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A crucial book at a crossroads in American letters, 1905, December 23, 1998

By A Customer

By Ilan Mochari

Sandwiched in American literary time between The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby, The Golden Bowl is plainly influenced by the former and an influence on the latter. In all three books, the plot hinges on an act of adultery. More importantly, in all three books, the act of adultery is never explicitly narrated to us. We learn somehow that the infidelity has occurred, and judge the subsequent behavior of characters in light of the infidelity.

There is a tendency in book reviews and literature classes to "boil down" complex works of art into manageable chunks. Suffice it here to say that The Golden Bowl resists reduction marvelously. It's Henry James at his finest, refusing to sugarcoat "love" as an innocent pastime and blessing us with brilliant characters who fully analyze their sophisticated insecurities. Book one (of two) opens with its protagonist, Amerigo, in deep reflection about his imminent marriage to the wealthy Maggie Verver. Why exactly does a rich American beauty who could have whatever man she wants purport to love a penniless, defrocked Italian "Prince?"

Make no mistake: The Golden Bowl is not light reading, and any reader who treats it as such will find him or herself backing up and rereading each sentence to capture what was lost. You can't speed through the book, looking for what "happens." You won't find it. Or at least, Henry James won't tell you straight out. James challenges the reader with the onus of judgment. Is your husband having an affair? Chances are that, rather than ask him straight out, you'll beat around the bush and judge whether he is or not by his behavior. No one conveys such tacit social jousting quite like Henry James, and in The Golden Bowl the old master is in peak form.

Divided into two books, The Golden Bowl provides a neatly segmented picture of life for a romantic couple both before (Book 1) and after (Book 2) an adultery takes place. Now the book's narrator never actually reveals that Maggie Verver, the second book's protagonist, is "on" to her husband's faithless behavior. Instead, it's something the reader must gather through subtle, nuanced shifts in the comportment and dialogue of the involved characters. One can even make a cogent argument -- based strictly on textual evidence -- that no affair has taken place.

The canonical beauty of the book is as much in its narrative style -- one of implicit revelation rather than an omniscient chronicling of events -- as it is in the actual storyline. Where Henry James has evolved from his "Portrait of a Lady" days is in the delivery of the tale. It is as though he is saying, here in his final novel (1905), "Any author worth a grain of salt can give you a straightforward, nineteenth century plot. Here is a different, more elevated manner of story-telling that departs dramatically from anything I've done before."

What we get is a work that straddles artistic boundaries, anticipating the oblique narratives of American modernism while subverting the 'and then...' style typical of the previous century's bildungsromans. On top of that, The Golden Bowl is a character-driven masterpiece, whose six characters possess distinguished Shakespearean personalites -- they are hilariously eloquent and fiercely intelligent. But that's de rigeur for a James opus. The whole book, in form and content, shines with what Harold Bloom calls James' "aesthetic eminence" -- stunning turns of phrase that you wish were yours, along with a deft narrative cadence that seamlessly unites scene upon scene into a layered and cohesive whole. The crown jewel in James' vaunted career, The Golden Bowl is a journey in American letters that no accomplished reader should fail to make.

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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars James' finest, in my opinion..., April 10, 1999

By A Customer

How does one choose between Henry James novels? Can one really put the feminine insight of The Portrait of a Lady above the moral conflict of The Wings of the Dove? I loved both those novels, and thought that The Ambassadors was quite good as well. But The Golden Bowl, for me, was another experience altogether.

First of all, I found "Bowl" to be the most difficult of James' novels to read. Actually, it was one of the most difficult books I have ever read, period. One must reread many passages to make sure they have the right meaning because the prose is so austere and almost impenetrable. But, once you get to the conclusion, it's more than worth it. You have to stick with this novel right to the end in order to fully appreciate its brilliance. The characters are realized with an intelligence that is rare to find in literature today, and they are written about in such a wonderfully restrained and subtle way. Don't miss this literary triumph, and please don't shy away from it because it is considered a "classic" or because of your possible misconceptions of Henry James.

Also, I read that it is being developed for an upcoming film version by Merchant Ivory. If that's true, then moviegoers are in for a treat!

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33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece and its betrayal, July 1, 2001

By	Richard Crowder (Glen Allen, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I discovered James in college and read all his full-length novels before reaching age 30. The only one I had real trouble with was The Golden Bowl.

I recently reread the novel and reveled in its elegant complexity. (It would be nice to think that the passage of 20 years has brought wisdom and insight that made me a better reader, but the credit belongs to Dorothea Krook's illuminating discussion in The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James.)

The Golden Bowl is the last, the most demanding, and the most rewarding of James's major novels. Even its immediate predecessors, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, do not reach its deep examination of the mixed motives, the tangled good and evil, that drive human action and passion. Although he presents his characters' acts and much of what goes on in their heads, James manages in such a way that while Krook believes Adam and Maggie are on the side of the angels, Gore Vidal (who introduces the current Penguin edition) believes they are monsters of manipulation--and (as Krook acknowledges) both views are consistent with the evidence.

Much--too much--of these riches of doubt and ambiguity is lost in the Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala translation to the screen (2001). The movie has some good things, but it could have had many more. Surprised by extraneous material (like the exotic dance), heavy-handed symbolism (the exterior darkness on the day Charlotte and Amerigo find the golden bowl), and needless oversimplifications (Amerigo's talk of "dishonor" to Charlotte, which exaggerates his virtue and his desire to be done with her), I got the sense that nobody involved in the production had read the novel with the care that it requires and rewards. Had they done so, their version could have been really fine--both as a movie and as an invitation to the novel.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The deepest pleasures of a masterwork--but only for the mature, meditatively reflective few.
This last completed novel of Henry James, the third of his three culminating masterworks, is not for the reader who doesn't understand that there is a difference between high,... Read more

Published 22 months ago by Phillip Stambovsky

3.0 out of 5 stars More than I was up for, I think
The rating is for my own enjoyment of the book - not for its literary quality.

Henry James is not my cup of tea. Tea being an appropriate metaphor, as Mr. Read more

Published 23 months ago by Elmore Hammes

2.0 out of 5 stars Not for me, but...
"The Golden Bowl" (1904), written by Henry James (1843 -1916), is a book that many consider a classic. Read more

Published on January 12, 2007 by Bel Alcat

5.0 out of 5 stars The Golden Bowl: The Meaning of "Value"
Reading THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James can be either an exercise in frustration or of exhiliration. If after reading a few pages one deduces the former, then one has allowed an... Read more

Published on August 14, 2006 by Martin Asiner

4.0 out of 5 stars The Golden Bowl
Reading late James - particularly "The Golden Bowl" - often strikes me as being similar to reading a novel in a foreign language whose vocabulary you have mastered but whose... Read more

Published on April 3, 2006 by Ross Blackman

5.0 out of 5 stars Actually...
The Prince and Charlotte have not "been lovers" - they've only been in love.

Published on November 30, 2005 by Thad Curtz

4.0 out of 5 stars not for everybody
There are at least two movie adaptations of James's "The Golden Bowl" that I'm aware of: a recent one (2000) with Nick Nolte and Uma Thurman (generally regarded as tiresome), and... Read more

Published on November 5, 2004 by Caraculiambro

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed reaction
Very long, very detailed, and a compendium of compound sentences. It's necessary to read this book during concentrated quiet time. Read more

Published on April 10, 2004 by J. Jacobs

3.0 out of 5 stars A massive headache
Like all the rest of James' works The Golden Bowl gave me a massve headache. Amidst all the adjectives and adverbs James tells an interesting story where all the characters act... Read more

Published on December 12, 2003 by cmerrell

3.0 out of 5 stars Pompous and verbose
I just spent two weeks reading this book thinking that at some point there would be a hook or a payoff. There was none. Read more

Published on November 16, 2003 by P. Costello

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