A Little Tour in France
James travelled through France in 1882 and wrote up the trip as a series of letters about cathedrals, provincial towns and the discomforts of carriage travel. It is a young writer's book, more interested in architecture and manners than in the inner life that would dominate his later novels.
The pleasure is the company: James is curious, easily bored, and very funny about hotels and guides. He is also honest about how much of France he is not seeing. Read it before a first trip, or after one, when you can compare his impressions with your own.
Public-domain status
First published in 1884. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Henry James died in 1916, so this work has been free to republish there since 1987.
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