The new governess is in sole charge of two orphan children. Although they are both remarkably well-behaved, intelligent and affectionate, she becomes increasingly uneasy. Especially after she sees a stranger seemingly in search of something--or someone; a man whom she discovers is dead, like her predecessor. She then must fight a frightening battle for her pupils and against the forces of evil, a battle in which her victory will be even more terrible.
The Turn of the Screw is a subtle and unconventional ghost story that concentrates on the psychological rather than the actual. It is open to widely different interpretations. Are the ghosts a real danger to the children or merely imagined by a lonely and susceptible woman? But what is certain is that the novel exerts a chilly and lasting power over the reader's imagination.
About the Author
Born in 1838 into the family of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Henry Adams had the opportunity to pursue a wide-ranging variety of intellectual interests during the course of his life. Functioning both in the world of practical men and affairs (as a journalist and an assistant to his father, Charles Francis Adams), and in the world of ideas (as a prolific writer, the editor of the prestigious North American Review, and a professor of medieval, European, and American history at Harvard), Adams was one of the few men of his era who attempted to understand art, thought, culture, and history as one complex force field of interacting energies.
