The Turn of the Screw

In a remote English estate in the mid-19th century, an inexperienced young governess is given charge of two beguiling orphans—an eight-year-old girl and a ten-year-old boy. Immediately, she must confront secrets in the house: why was the boy expelled from his boarding school? and what was the fate of the previous governess? And then the house seems to be haunted by ghosts. Are they malevolent former denizens of the household bent on the children’s destruction? Or something else? Henry James, the Master of American letters, who had a special love for ghost stories, takes supernatural horror a step further in one of the true masterpieces of the genre.


This Top Five Classics edition of The Turn of the Screw features the 1898 text of the novella in book form, as well as the illustrations by John La Farge and Eric Pape that accompanied its initial run in Collier’s Weekly. An informative introduction and author bio are also included.


Cover illustration by Stephanie Brown