05/10/2026
October's book of the month at Lamb House! 📖
The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James (1898)
Henry James’s novella, The Turn of the Screw, published in 1898, is a masterpiece of ambiguity and psychological horror. A story told from the perspective of an unnamed governess, it chronicles her experiences caring for two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, at a remote country estate called Bly. The governess becomes convinced that the children are being haunted, and potentially possessed, by the ghosts of the deceased former valet, Peter Quint, and the former governess, Miss Jessel. The story’s brilliance lies not in explicit supernatural events, but in the uncertainty it creates: are the ghosts real, or are they figments of the governess’s increasingly disturbed imagination?
Henry James heard the original and true account of this story from Archbishop Benson, father of E. F. Benson, in January 1895 and later composed The Turn of the Screw as he was moving into Lamb House.
This limited edition of The Turn of the Screw (1940) is number eighty-three of a print run of two hundred books printed on Barcham Green handmade rag paper with illustrations by Mariette Lydis.
