The two tales in this edition, The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw, reveal at its finest James’s genius for creating a world out of a single incident and charging it with unforgettable dramatic tension.

A story of ‘spoils and stratagems’, The Aspern Papers is set in a crumbling Venetian palazzo, where an old woman treasures up some letters sent to her by the great American poet Aspern. When a zealous lirerary historian arrives and attempts to prise the letters from her, he finds his charm, ingenuity and morals stretched to breaking point.

‘It is a wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale,’ wrote Oscar Wilde of The Turn of the Screw, James’s most puzzling and controversial work. In the story of a governess newly in charge of two small children, haunt