By Henry James

The Aspern Papers:

One of the wittiest and most scathing of Henry James’s novellas, The Aspern Papers chronicles the attempt to extract the valuable letters of the famous and recently deceased poet Jeffrey Aspern from the hands of his past lover and formidable adversary in the battle, Juliana Bordereau. The plot was reputedly suggested to James by a story he heard of an illicit attempt to get hold of several of Lord Byron’s letters.

Set in a gloriously described Venice, James winds the tension of the story around the efforts of the anonymous and amoral hero to inveigle his way into the trust of Bordereau via the arms of her spinster sister. James himself hated any form of intrusion into his privacy and the sense of danger with which he fills the story as the papers get closer to being obtained and published stirs the suspense of the story right up until the last paragraph, when the beautiful twist in the tail is revealed.