Travel

Travelers

Ames committed himself to literature and traveling, slowly assuming the function of analyzer and detached spectator of life. In his early novels, including Roderick Hudson (1876), The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1879), and The Portrait of a Lady (1881), in addition to some of his later work, James contrasts the refined, though somewhat staid, Europeans with the innocent, enthusiastic, though frequently brash, Americans. In the novels of his middle interval, The Bostonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima (1886), and The Tragic Muse (1890), he turned his attention from the international theme to reformers, revolutionaries, and political aspirants.
During and after an unsuccessful sixyear effort (1889-95) to acquire recognition as a playwright, James wrote a collection of short, powerful novels, including The Aspern Papers (1888), What Maisie Knew (1897), The Spoils of Poynton (1897), The Turn of the Screw (1898), and The Sacred Fount (1901). In his last and maybe his finest novels, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904), all marked with a return to the international theme, James reached his highest development in the description of the intricate subtleties of character and in the utilization of a complicated,travel convoluted fashion to express fine nuances of thought.