# The Turn of the Screw (1898)

> The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, first published 27 Jan 1898: publication record, synopsis, a verified quotation and sources.

Canonical page: https://lineageofshadows.com/works/turn-of-the-screw/

Title: The Turn of the Screw
Author: Henry James
Form: Novella
First appearance: 27 Jan 1898 (timeline year 1898)
Themes: The house, The supernatural, Madness, Women in peril, Confession and documents

## Publication record

- Serial, 27 Jan 1898: Collier's Weekly, New York. Weekly instalments; Part First opens in the issue dated New York, January 27, 1898 (Vol. 20, No. 17), and later parts appear in the issues of 12 March and 19 March 1898. The end date is not established by an authoritative source. An Eric Pape illustration is dated 5 March 1898 in the Beinecke-held item. [1, 2]
- Volume, 1898: The Macmillan Company (New York); William Heinemann (London), New York and London. First book appearance, in The Two Magics with 'Covering End'. The Gutenberg title page reads 'New York, The Macmillan Company; London, Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1898'; the Internet Archive record describes a Heinemann 1898 'First English edition'. Only the year is established. [3, 4]

## Synopsis

At a country house on Christmas Eve, a guest called Douglas reads aloud the manuscript of a governess long dead. Hired by a charming bachelor guardian who refuses to be troubled, she takes charge of two orphans, Flora and Miles, at his estate of Bly in Essex. Miles is expelled from school for reasons nobody will state. The governess begins to see a man on the tower and a woman by the lake, and learns from the housekeeper Mrs Grose that they resemble two servants who have died. Whether the dead truly return, and what they want from the children, is left for the reader to judge.

## Setting

A mid-Victorian past, told on a Christmas Eve by a frame narrator. Places: Bly, a country house in Essex; London (Harley Street) [5]

## From the text

> The great question, or one of these, is, afterward, I know, with regard to certain matters, the question of how long they have lasted.

Chapter III. Project Gutenberg ebook #209: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/209 (Gutenberg text, which is the book (1898) text, not the Collier's serial and not the 1908 New York Edition revision)

## Facts

- The title phrase belongs to the frame story: after one guest says a child makes a ghost story creepier, the guest Douglas remarks that if a child gives the effect another turn of the screw, one may ask what two children would do; the manuscript he then reads is the answer (Prologue, where the Gutenberg text italicises 'two'). [5]
- The tale first ran in 1898 in Collier's Weekly, illustrated by Eric Pape, who made five images for the serial (one, of the governess meeting the ghost of Miss Jessel, is dated 5 March 1898 and is held at the Beinecke Library, Yale); it reached book form later that year in The Two Magics, alongside the short story 'Covering End'. [2, 3, 4]
- The governess herself reaches for Gothic precedent: in the fourth chapter she asks whether Bly hides 'a mystery of Udolpho' or an 'insane, an unmentionable relative kept in unsuspected confinement'. [5]

## Threads in

- Descends from: [The Mysteries of Udolpho](https://lineageofshadows.com/works/mysteries-of-udolpho/): The governess explicitly asks whether she has stumbled on 'a mystery of Udolpho' at Bly (Chapter IV), marking the story's debt to the Radcliffean secret-in-the-house plot. [5]

## Notes on dates and attribution

- Serial dates: Part First is in Collier's Weekly of 27 January 1898 (issue scan); the end date is not established, so none is shown.
- Publisher of the book: the Gutenberg title page of The Two Magics names Macmillan (New York and London); the Internet Archive record describes a Heinemann 'First English edition'. Only the year is shown.

## Sources

1. Collier's: The National Weekly, 27 January 1898, Vol. 20 Iss. 17 (issue scan; opens 'The Turn of the Screw' Part First, drawn by John La Farge). Internet Archive (Serials in Microfilm). https://archive.org/details/sim_colliers-the-national-weekly_1898-01-27_20_17 (accessed 2026-10-09)
2. Things Terrible and Unguessable: The Turn of the Screw and the Visual Vocabulary of Gothic Horror (item: Eric Pape illustration, Collier's Weekly, 5 March 1898; original at Beinecke Library, Yale). Omeka exhibit (holding institution: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library). https://thingsterribleandunguessable.omeka.net/exhibits/show/things-terrible-and-unguessabl/item/1 (accessed 2026-10-09)
3. The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw, Covering End (Project Gutenberg ebook #42486; title page: New York, The Macmillan Company, 1898). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42486 (accessed 2026-10-09)
4. The two magics. The turn of the screw, Covering End (London: W. Heinemann, 1898; 'First English edition'). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/turnofthescrew00jamerich (accessed 2026-10-09)
5. The Turn of the Screw (Project Gutenberg ebook #209). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/209 (accessed 2026-10-09)