The Turn of the Screw: Collier's Weekly version
Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, is one of the most often read, often taught, and often criticized novels in the history of literature.
For the first time since 1898, readers can experience Henry James’s eerie The Turn of the Screw the way his original readers did, as a twelve-part weekly serial. The Coffeetown Press edition showcases the novel as it first appeared, complete with provocative illustrations by John La Farge and Eric Pape, in Collier’s Weekly.
This unique edition, with an analytical introduction by Peter G. Beidler, will of course be valuable to scholars. It will be particularly useful, however, for undergraduate classroom use.
It allows readers to experience first-hand the suspense generated by the week-by-week grouping of chapters.
It also lets them read the young governess’s story of her dangerous encounter with prowling spirits as it first appeared, before James made the 500-odd changes in wording he introduced later. After reading Beidler’s detailed appendix analyzing all of James’s revisions, readers will see that in many ways this earliest version of The Turn of the Screw was James’s best.
Peter G. Beidler spent most of his long teaching career as the Lucy G. Moses Distinguished Professor of English at Lehigh University. He has published widely on Henry James and especially on The Turn of the Screw. His Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw at the Turn of the Century came out in 1989. He co-edited (with Kimberly C. Reed) the Modern Language Association’s Approaches to Teaching Henry James’s Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (2005). In addition, he edited all three editions, with associated cultural and critical materials, of The Turn of the Screw for the popular Bedford Books series Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism (1992, 2004, 2010). For that Bedford series he presented James’s last (1908) version. For this Coffeetown Press edition he presents for the first time in more than a century James’s first (1898) version as it was serialized in Collier’s Weekly.
Beidler was named National Professor of the Year in 1983 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation. He was named Fulbright Professor at Sichuan University in Chengdu, mainland China, for 1987-88, and the Robert Foster Cherry Visiting Distinguished Teaching Professor at Baylor University, for 1995-96. He now lives with his wife Anne in Seattle, WA.