The American

THE AMERICAN

Henry James

HENRY JAMES

erican

The American

by Henry James (1843-1916)

One of James’s early novels, The American plunges right in to one of the
writer's most enduring subjects, that of the innocent, or at least
inexperienced, American abroad, seeking to come to terms with the social
customs and conventions of an old European aristocracy (think of Daisy
Miller, Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove and others). The aptly
named Christopher Newman, having made a small fortune from business in
California, has come to the Old World for the first time, determined to
enlarge his experience by learning all he can of it. In Paris he meets an old
acquaintance, Tom Tristram, who (though he himself has little interest in
educating himself about Europe) shows him around, and introduces him to
the young widow Claire de Cintre, whose family — the aristocratic de
Bellegardes — distrust his American brashness and commercialism. Claire,
nonetheless, agrees to marry him, thus pulling Newman, rather more deeply
than he is prepared for, into a society that closely guards its secrets, and
forcing him to face new and quite unexpected questions.

Total running time: 14:01:20 LibriVox

Read by Nicholas Clifford

Acoustical liberation of books
in the Public Domain

Portrait of John Ridgely Carter John Singer Sargent (1901)

Cover design by Kathryn Delaney

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