The story concerns the contemplated sale of a famous painting by a proud but relatively cash-strapped British aristocrat to a wealthy American art collector who is bent on buying up treasured masterpieces from the Old World, and the patriotic outcry after the public gets wind of his intent. The...

Collection of short stories by Henry James

Rich and beautiful American girls heading to England to find themselves noble titles through marriage, and using their New World wealth to prop up the waning strength of the aristocracy, was almost a staple of late Victorian literature. "The Buccaneers," Edith Wharton called them, and their day...

Roderick Hudson is James's first important novel. The theme of Americans in Europe, so important in much of James's work, is already central to the story. Hudson is a young law student in Northampton, Massachusetts, who shows such surprising ability as a sculptor that the rich Rowland Mallett,...