The Beldonald Holbein
Henry James
Read The Beldonald Holbein by Henry James in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/2366-the-beldonald-holbein.txt.
Description
Henry James's short tale The Beldonald Holbein turns on a portrait: a beautiful woman whose likeness, painted like a Holbein, becomes the obsession of her circle. The narrator, an artist's friend, watches as the painting's fame and the woman's aging collide, with James's usual irony about art, beauty, and social cruelty. The story is slight in plot and rich in observation.
James uses the portrait to ask what art preserves and what it falsifies. The tale's quiet ending carries a sting. Readers of James's shorter fiction will enjoy this polished gem.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Henry James |
|---|---|
| COLLECTION | BOOKS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 45 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | Public Domain |
| RIGHTS | PUBLIC DOMAIN |
| SOURCE | Project Gutenberg |