The Turn of the Screw

Henry James

Mar 2021 · Legend Press

About this ebook

Adapted into the Netflix series The Haunting of Bly Manor, the major motion picture The Turning starring Finn Wolfhard, and an opera in London's West End.

“No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see—what I don’t fear!”

In this classic gothic horror ghost story, we follow a young governess and her deep psychological anguish. It begins when she agrees to care for two orphans living in a remote estate, and her sudden conviction that the grounds are haunted.

Henry James used the horror genre to imbue the everyday with the uncanny and the unknown. A true measure of his success can be found in the debates still raging today: on topics of the characters' sanity, the concept of truth in fiction, and the extent to which James manipulates the reader.

Written with such exquisite ambiguity, this book will call into question everything you know - but, in The Turn of the Screw, not knowing the truth might be a blessing.

The Legend Classics series:
Around the World in Eighty Days
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Importance of Being Earnest
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Metamorphosis
The Railway Children
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Frankenstein
Wuthering Heights
Three Men in a Boat
The Time Machine
Little Women
Anne of Green Gables
The Jungle Book
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
Dracula
A Study in Scarlet
Leaves of Grass
The Secret Garden
The War of the Worlds
A Christmas Carol
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Heart of Darkness
The Scarlet Letter
This Side of Paradise
Oliver Twist
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Treasure Island
The Turn of the Screw
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Emma
The Trial
A Selection of Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
Grimm Fairy Tales
The Awakening
Mrs Dalloway
Gulliver’s Travels
The Castle of Otranto
Silas Marner
Hard Times

About the author

Henry James is best known for writing The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove. His later works were increasingly experimental, and were often described as literature's equivalent to an impressionist painting. His novella The Turn of the Screw is one of the most analysed ghost stories in the English language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912 and 1916.