The Ambassadors

Lambert Strether is sent to Paris by the formidable Mrs. Newsome of Woollett, Mass., to reclaim her son Chad for American marriage, American business and the American way of life - before it is too late and he is tangled in the toils of wicked Europe for life. But rather than finding his task a straightforward one, the charmed ambassador loves Paris, delights to find Chad refined into a winning young man of the world, and rejoices in the style of life led by Chad and his amiable friends. A second ambassador has to be despatched : the redoubtable Sarah Pocock. The Ambassadors is a classic masterpiece in the Jamesian confrontation of the New World and the Old. Taut throughout with the energy of complex understanding, written in the prose of a master, it stands among the supreme accomplishments of prose in the years that ended for ever with 1914.