Roderick Hudson
A wealthy patron discovers a young sculptor in a New England town and takes him to Rome, where talent and temperament are tested against money and expatriate society. It is James's first novel of any length, and already contains the subject he would spend his career on: the American who is both liberated and damaged by Europe.
Roderick's decline is described from the outside, by a friend who cannot decide how responsible he is. The Roman chapters are vivid, and the final movement has a coldness that anticipates the later James. Read it as an apprentice work with a very good second half.
Public-domain status
First published in 1875. 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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