James’ plays The Album and The Reprobate were never produced, so he published them in book form in 1895 as the second volume of his Theatricals (1894-5). The Album, which turns on the inheritance of a country house outside London, includes an heir, a long-missing potential rival, and three women of varying desires and ambitions. In The Reprobate, a stranger from Paris appears at a Hampton Court villa, and her appearance upsets the household and the secrets of the life lived there. James also provides a lengthy preface discussing his writings for the stage and his travails in the theater.
A propos de l’auteur
Henry James (1843-1916) was born in America but after forty years in England became a British subject in 1915. A consummate prose stylist and innovator, possessed of acute psychological discernment, James took the art of the novel to rarefied heights in such masterworks as The Turn of the Screw and The Golden Bowl, helping to pioneer literary realism.