A young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncle at his grand country house. She sees the figure of an unknown man on the tower and his face at the window. It is Peter Quint, the master’s dissolute valet, and he has come for little Miles. But Peter Quint is dead.

          Like the other tales collected here – "Sir Edmund Orme", "Owen Wingrave", and "The Friends of the Friends" – "The Turn of the Screw" is to all immediate appearances a ghost story. But are appearances what they seem? A subtle, self-conscious exploration of the haunted house of Victorian culture, filled with echoes of sexual and social unease, "The Turn of the Screw" is probably the most famous and eerily equivocal of all ghostly tales.

CONTENTS:
Introduction
Note on the texts
Further reading
Chronology by Leon Edel
Prefaces by Henry James
SIR EDMUND ORME
OWEN WINGRAVE
THE FRIENDS OF THE FRIENDS
THE TURN OF THE SCREW
Appendix: from James’s Notebooks
Notes
Variant readings