When the mild-mannered Lambert Strether travels from America to Paris on a mission to ‘save’ Chad, the son of his formidable fiancee, he soon discovers that life in Europe is not at all what he had expected. Faced by the temptations of Parisian culture and the possibility of emotional liberation, Lambert is forced to reconsider his values.Full of his customary wit and canny observations, Henry James proclaimed The Ambassadors to be his greatest novel.

In The Portrait of a Lady. (1881), spirited young Isabel Archer travels from her home in Albany, New York, eager to discover what life has to offer in Europe. Determined to shape her own destiny, she rejects two eligible suitors — one American and one English — in her pursuit of freedom.Isabel’s independence at first seems assured by a surprise legacy from her uncle but, ironically, her wealth only serves to attract the scheming Madame Merle and the cruelly possessive Gilbert Osmond. The revelations that follow Isabel’s marriage to Osmond are devastating and she is forced to confront the conflict between society’s demand for propriety and her own fierce sense of independence.