A wealthy American man of business descends on Europe in search of a wife to make his fortune complete. His bid for Claire de Cintré hand receives an icy welcome from the heads of her aristocratic family. Can they stomach his manners for the sake of his dollars? Out of this classic collision between the old world and the new, James weaves a fable of thwarted desire that shifts between comedy, tragedy, romance and melodrama a fable which in the later version
printed here takes on some of the subtleties associated with this greatest novels.