"As Napoleon annexed territories by waging wars, James annexed, in his imagination, the whole of Europe to the American novel." —Leon Edel<br/>"James's critical genius comes out most tellingly in his mastery over, his baffling escape from, Ideas; a mastery and an escape which are perhaps the last test of a superior intelligence. He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it… He is the most intelligent man of his generation." —T. S. Eliot<br/>"I read it all. And I wept too." —Robert Louis Stevenson<br/>"‘The Portrait of a Lady’ is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world." —Rebecca West<br/>"The greatest American novelist." —Harold Bloom<br/><br/>"The Portrait of a Lady" is the most stunning achievement of Henry James's early period — in the 1860s and '70s when he was transforming himself from a talented young American into a resident of Europe, a citizen of the world, and one of the greatest novelists of modern times. A kind of delight at the success of this transformation informs every page of this masterpiece. Isabel Archer, a beautiful, intelligent, and headstrong American girl newly endowed with wealth and embarked in Europe on a treacherous journey to self-knowledge, is delineated with a magnificence that is at once casual and tense with force and insight. The characters with whom she is entangled — the good man and the evil one, between whom she wavers, and the mysterious witchlike woman with whom she must do battle — are each rendered with a virtuosity that suggests dazzling imaginative powers. And the scene painting — in England and Italy — provides a continuous visual pleasure while always remaining crucial to the larger drama.