The Ambassadors

Lambert Strether, a widowed editor in his fifties from Woollett, Massachusetts, is sent to Paris by the rich widow he hopes to marry, Mrs Newsome, to bring home her son Chad, who is believed to be wasting his life with a wicked woman. In Paris Strether finds Chad transformed into a polished gentleman, falls under the spell of the city and of the elegant Madame de Vionnet, and begins to wonder whether he should be urging Chad to stay. 'Live all you can,' he tells a young friend; 'it's a mistake not to.'

Henry James considered this novel, published in 1903, the best of all his books. Written in his late, intricate style, it is a subtle comedy of perception in which everything is seen through Strether's slowly changing understanding. Begin with James's shorter Daisy Miller and Washington Square, and see his life.

Henry James (1843–1916) was born in New York, the brother of the philosopher William James, and was educated in Europe and America. In 1876 he settled in London, and later in the small town of Rye, and spent his life writing about Americans in Europe and the clash of innocence and experience.

In some twenty novels and more than a hundred stories, including The Portrait of a Lady and The Turn of the Screw, he developed a subtle, psychological style that influenced modern fiction. He became a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death.