Title: James and the children
First published: 1968
Description: Critic Robert B. Heilman wrote: “It is an immense relief to find someone as good as Siegel is, refusing the fashionable explanation of the story, and looking at what it actually says.”

“It is a reading so careful and candid it reduces most previous discussion to wilful evasiveness. The oddness of a literary critic constantly asking us to think about real children can suggest how odd is the criticism we’re accustomed to.” —<i>Poetry Magazine</i>

“<i>The Turn of the Screw</i> is gripping,” writes Martha Baird in the editor’s introduction, “and carries with it an atmosphere of mystery and suspense hardly equalled in fiction.” About Eli Siegel she writes: “Never have I known anyone so able to makes books live, to make their import stir within a person. He lessens the distance between print and life….This happens with <i>The Turn of the Screw.</i>”
Subjects: Children in literature, Governesses in literature, Ghost stories, History and criticism
People: Henry James (1843-1916)