825 Henry James's Ghosts (with Morgan Lloyd Malcolm) | My Last Book with David Womersley
The History of Literature

825 Henry James's Ghosts (with Morgan Lloyd Malcolm) | My Last Book with David Womersley

B1IntermediateAugust 24, 20261 hr 8 min
  • Interview
  • Arts & culture

In 1895, Henry James suffered through a terrible failure, as his play Guy Domville was greeted by hoots, jeers, and tomatoes being thrown at the play's author. James responded by starting work on his masterpiece The Turn of the Screw, which tells the story of a governess and the demonic forces haunting her and the children in her care. In this episode, Jacke talks to playwright and screenwriter Morgan Lloyd Malcolm about her new adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, which has its world premiere at London's Arcola Theater in September. PLUS eighteenth-century expert David Womersley (Thinking Through Shakespeare...

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James' life.

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1:06

Hello, professionally speaking, January 5, 1895 might have been the worst night of Henry James' life. That night he attended the opening of his play Guy Domville, and the London crowd rejected him in a spectacular way. They rioted. He was booed, jeered, and assaulted with tomatoes.

1:28

James felt he had, quote, fallen upon evil days, every sign or symbol of one's being in the least wanted, anywhere or by anyone, having so utterly failed. End quote. It was not a great stretch for James, who was 51 at the time. For the past few years, the sales of his novels had declined, even more importantly, perhaps, the Atlantic, the most popular literary magazine of his era,

1:57

had stopped accepting his works. He was feeling irrelevant as an artist, and even as a human being, that old feeling of not having lived was always nearby, and it haunted him. him. Personally, he was affected by the deaths of several of those closest to him.

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