Audiobook · read by volunteers
Turn of the Screw
Henry James (1843–1916)
Read by Nikolle Doolin · 25 chapters · 5 h 43
About the book
It is Christmas Eve, and a group of friends gathered around the fire tell ghost stories. One of them has a manuscript that he has never shown anyone, written long ago by a woman he once knew. It is the account of a young governess hired by a charming bachelor to look after his orphaned niece and nephew at a lonely country house. She is told never to trouble him with news. But soon she sees figures where no one should be, and she becomes convinced that the children know more than they say. Henry James's novella is a masterpiece of ambiguity, and it leaves the reader to decide whether the horror is out there or within. A single reader takes you through twenty-five brief chapters in just under six hours. A chill that grows slowly and stays.
Introduction
Henry James, who lived from 1843 to 1916, was an American writer who settled in England and wrote some of the most subtle novels in the language. His long career includes The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, with their intricate analysis of consciousness and manners. The Turn of the Screw is one of his shorter works, a novella first published in 1898, and it is by far the most famous of his ghost stories.
The story is told within a frame, and the centre of it is the account of a nameless governess. She is young, inexperienced and eager to do well, and she is soon convinced that two ghosts are stalking the children in her care. The question that has kept readers and critics arguing ever since is whether she is telling the truth or whether her imagination is running away with her. James keeps the matter deliberately open, and his sentences, with their careful qualifications and half-hints, make the uncertainty part of the pleasure. Few ghost stories have been so thoroughly debated.
The novella has inspired plays, films, an opera by Benjamin Britten and countless imitations. Its setting, a grand old house in the English countryside, and its atmosphere of dread among apparent innocence, have become templates for supernatural fiction. The language may feel dense to a new reader, but listening to it can be a gentle way into James's style.
This recording runs for about five and three quarter hours in twenty-five short chapters, beginning with a prologue, and is read by one LibriVox volunteer. It suits a dark evening and an attentive ear.
Public domain
Henry James died in 1916: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text