One of the great novels in English, Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady looks back to the late works of George Eliot and forward to the idea of the stream of consciousness. It is one of his international novels in which the American becomes the center of a European intrigue. It is full of fascinating characters, and not least is the enigmatic heroine, Isabel Archer, and her very unusual American husband, Gilbert Osmond.

Participants read Portrait of a Lady alongside Michael Gorra’s Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece (Liveright, 2012).