This is truly a masterpiece of literature and was a pleasure to read and listen to as performed by Alicia Johnson. James was quite the loquacious writer and his command of the English language exceptional. As the story unfolded I was mesmerized by the descriptive way in which he brought out every nuance of his characters or minute details of the surroundings, be it the estate in England or Rome, Italy (the eternal city). The protagonist of the work is a young American, Isabel Archer, who being educated or accomplished wants so much more out of life than being someone's wife, she longs to see the world, experience new things and a visit from an Aunt who resides in England but spends most of her time abroad is persuaded to accompany her. Isabel impresses her rich Uncle and his son with her independent nature and more than amuses them with their discourses, they conspire to make it possible for her dreams to come true. Even good intentions can go awry as Isabel will eventually come to know. The novel is rife with deceptions, and Isabel will have to make choices. I highly recommend this work and hope others will not be daunted by the length nor think that the author verbose.

It's embarrassing that I've reached a mature age without ever having read anything by Henry James. I'd always wanted to, but every time I started The Ambassadors or The Portrait of a Lady, I'd give up after a couple chapters. Recently I had a chunk of time and I decided to try again, with The Portrait of a Lady. What an incredible book! To read a 19th Century masterpiece is a very different experience from reading a lot of contemporary literary fiction: you're forced to read deeply. The pace is slow, the unveiling of plot is subtle. You sink into the book and you breathe the air and feel the life of Isabel Archer and Ralph Touchett, Lord Warburton  and Madam Merle, among the many. James writes exquisite sentences: I almost wished I could read with my eyes closed so that I could let his vision overtake me.   It was an unbelievably beautiful experience. 

Isabel Archer is truly one of literature's great heroines: I did not want to like her, but she is an irresistible force, and once you've been introduced, you'll never want to forget her or this book.

Overall I have had pretty good luck with the books (Classic) I have ordered for my Kindle. Yes, there were some that were so badly formatted that I simply removed them from my machine and tried again with another edition or fell back into my never failing method of simply purchasing a good hard copy.

Fortunately this Kindle edition of ‘Portrait of a Lady – Volume 1) is excellent and I have not complaints what so every. I actually found that reading it on my Paper White was as nearly as pleasurable as reading a nicely done hard copy.

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James is one of those books that can truly be called a ‘classic’ and few would argue this point. Many books can be read relatively fast and this one can be read that way also but do take note: This is one of those books that you want to slow down when reading it and savor each line. You want to get to know the heroine and by following the story closely you can learn much of why we are the way we are to this very day.

This book is pure reading pleasure and it is one that most people I know (myself included) will want to give multiple reads.

It should be noted also that the Kindle is ideal for people like me who do no speak French and the on-line dictionary provided was wonderful.

The Portrait of a Lady is a brilliant book about human manipulation, love, and marriage that shows just how important real-life experience is to making the right choices in life. While the focus of the novel is on the pitfalls of a young woman, making the dilemmas she faces somewhat particular to her gender, nonetheless there is plenty to be learned by all readers of this book, regardless of gender. I, for instance, first read this book right after I got married and firmly resolved that, as a reader of literature, I would never become a "sterile dilettante" like Gilbert Osmond. It is only now, three years divorced and much wiser about life, that I recognize that Osmond had never been my danger - like Isabel (and to an extent, like her cousin Ralph Touchett) my true pitfall lay in my romantic naivete. The deeper point is that this is a novel about wisdom, a clearheaded and penetrating look at the ways in which human beings lay the groundwork for their own misery.

The plot revolves around Isabel Archer, a young American who wishes to assert her independence and experience the world, an ambition that leads her to turn down excellent marriage proposals from the English aristocrat Lord Warburton and the rich American industrialist Caspar Goodwood. She is befriended in her sojourn by Mme Merle, a widow who in many ways is the woman that Isabel aspires to become. Mme Merle, in turn, introduces Isabel to Gilbert Osmond, an ambitious but relatively poor American living in Florence with his daughter Pansy, whose interest in Isabel as a person is difficult to disentangle from his interest in the fortune she inherited from her rich uncle near the book's beginning. The Portrait of a Lady is a long novel, but it never sags because of the way James divides up the story into different narrative arcs: Isabel's initial impressions of Europe, for instance, the encounters with her suitors, and so on.

Isabel's problems emerge from the contradictions of her own romantic nature. Her ideas about life are drawn largely from the novels she has read, and she uncritically equates emotional stimulation with experience. She is also, as her friend Henrietta Stackpole observes, someone who is too eager to please, willing to sacrifice herself to avoid the displeasure of others. James examines how this kind of quixotic character, while immensely charming in some ways, is turned into a puppet by those with a more clear-eyed view of the world. Indeed, the entire plot is built on an intricately woven web of lies and deceit that is somehow simple and yet, because of the genius for ambiguity with which James infuses both his characters and his prose, remains psychologically complex. My favorite example is when Isabel asks Mme Merle, "What have you to do with me?" and the latter replies: "Everything." Thus, Mme Merle confesses her deceitfulness (which the reader, but not Isabel, knows about all along), and yet does so in a manner that is so void of details, so utterly opaque that it tells us nothing more.

The Victorian era was a time of stifling conformity, and often this atmosphere can force novels from that period into having an unhappily forced conventional ending (see my review of Lady Audley's Secret, for instance). In this book, though, James turns that premise on its head, so that it is not the strange and subversive that the readers finds threatening, but rather the return to normality and the enforcement of the marriage contract. James pays lip service to the conventional Victorian ending, but it is a conclusion that is so chilling, so upsetting, that readers can only look upon it as a tragedy. The Portrait of a Lady does require some patience, but it is without doubt one of the greatest novels of all time.