The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James 1843–1916
The book, and the century it came out of.
A governess takes charge of two children in a country house and becomes convinced that two dead servants are still there and mean to have them. James gives you no way to settle whether she is right, and a century of readers has been unable to agree — the argument is the book. He dictated it aloud to a typist, which may explain the pressure of the voice. Illustrated with 47 full-page plates — paintings by Soyer and Haanen among them.
The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had…
The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Gothic & Horror
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 120 pages
- Reading time
- about 2 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785486658907
47 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
1898, when ghosts were being investigated
The Society for Psychical Research had been founded in 1882 and was seriously collecting and testing accounts of apparitions; James’s own brother William was a member and later its president. Educated people were arguing about whether the dead could be seen, and doing so with statistics.
James wrote a story that cannot be settled either way, at the exact moment when settling it looked possible. The ambiguity is not a trick of ours in retrospect; it was the live question of the decade.
This book in culture: 16 versions
Most people meet a book like this one on a screen first. Here are 8 of them, the earliest and the most recent among them — and none of them is the book.
The whole afterlife of The Turn of the Screw — screen, stage and beyond →
- 1959 The Turn of the Screw John Frankenheimer TV film
- 1974 Le tour d'écrou TV film
- 1985 Turn of the Screw Eloy de la Iglesia
- 1995 The Haunting of Helen Walker Tom McLoughlin TV film
- 2009 The Turn of the Screw Marco Serafini TV film
- 2015 Through the Shadow Walter Lima, Jr.
- 2020 The Turning Floria Sigismondi
- 1954 The Turn of the Screw Benjamin Britten dramatico-musical work
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
The Turn of the Screw, first published 1898, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Gothic & Horror shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785486658907, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of The Turn of the Screw?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Henry James's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 120 pages, which is roughly about 2 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
