The Turn of the Screw
Complete textA young governess takes charge of two children at a secluded country house under instructions not to trouble their distant guardian. When she believes unfamiliar figures are watching the household, her wish to protect her pupils becomes bound up with uncertain evidence and growing fear.
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The governess's written account reaches readers through a frame that adds distance without providing independent verification. James makes looks, silences, and evasive conversations carry the pressure of competing interpretations. Suspense arises not only from what might haunt the house, but from the authority of a narrator who must decide what the children know.
Reading focus
Read a carefully unsettled ghost story in which a governess's protective certainty continually outruns the evidence available to others.
This reading edition contains 42,769 words in 25 original sections. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: Henry James. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasion—an appearance, of a dreadful kind, to a little boy sleeping in the room with his mother and waking her up in the terror of it; waking her not to dissipate his dread and soothe him to sleep again, but to encounter also, herself, before she had…
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Is this the complete The Turn of the Screw?
This edition contains the complete English literary text, with 25 sections and 42,769 words. This reading edition preserves the checked English text and its section order. No study notes have been added.
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