Italian tales

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916)

Italian Tales

The Aspern Papers
The Diary of a Man of Fifty
Travelling Companions

"Our mornings were, of course, devoted to churches and galleries, and in the late afternoon we passed and repassed along the Grand Canal or betook ourselves to the Lido. By this time Miss Evans and I had become thoroughly intimate ; we had learned to know Venice together, and the knowledge had helped us to know each other. In my own mind, Charlotte Evans and Venice had played the game most effectively into each other's hands. If my fancy had been called upon to paint her portrait, my fancy would have sketched her with a background of sunset-flushed palace wall, with a faint reflected light from the green lagoon playing up into her face. And if I had wished to sketch a Venetian scene, I should have painted it from an open window, with a woman leaning against the casement,- as I had often seen her lean from a window in her hotel."

Of all American writers, Henry James is the most European. His lifelong fascination with Italy inspired these beautiful short stories, amongst which the famous Aspern Papers, set in the most haunting of Italian cities, Venice.