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American author and expatriate, Henry James is regarded as one the principal figures of 19th century literary realism. His work, which often features Americans traveling to Europe, is noted for its intimate examination of the consciousness of his characters. In this volume we find two of his most popular works. “The Turn of the Screw” is an intense psychological tale of terror. Beginning in an old house on Christmas Eve, it is the story of a governess who comes to live with and take care of two young children, whose parents have recently died. The governess loves her new position in charge of the young children; however she is soon disturbed when she begins to see ghosts. “The Aspern Papers” is the story of an unnamed narrator who travels to Venice in search of Juliana Bordereau, whom he believes is in possession of some personal letters of the famous and now dead American poet, Jeffrey Aspern. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and includes a preface by Henry James.

Charles Dickens’s tenth novel, which was first published serially in Dickens’s own periodical journal “Household Words” in 1854, “Hard Times,” is a work that sought to highlight the social and economic divide that was growing between capitalistic mill owners and workers during the Victorian era of Great Britain. Set in the fictitious Coketown, “Hard Times” is a critical examination of the poor working conditions in many English factory towns of the time as well as the changing nature of the aristocracy and the working-class in the second half of the 19th century. The novel centers on the lives of Thomas Gradgrind, senior, the superintendent of the local school, his children, Louisa and Thomas, junior, and Sissy Jupe, a free-spirited circus girl who struggles to fit in as a student under the rigidly utilitarian instruction of the Gradgrind school. Through the lives of Gradgrind’s children, Dickens’s seeks to criticize the failure of excessively utilitarian philosophy which was so prevalent during his time. As Louisa finds herself in an unhappy marriage and Thomas, junior, descends into a life of moral corruption, their father begins to realize the shortcomings of the philosophy that he has so rigidly applied in raising them. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and includes an introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple.