

The manuscript tells the story of her being hired by a man who has become responsible for his young niece and nephew following the deaths of their parents. One of them, Douglas, reads a manuscript written by his sister's late governess. On Christmas Eve, an unnamed narrator and some of his friends are gathered around a fire. The novella has been adapted several times, including a Broadway play (1950), a chamber opera (1954), two films (in 19), and a miniseries (2020). Later approaches incorporated Marxist and feminist thinking. In the early 1970s, the influence of structuralism resulted in an acknowledgement that the text's ambiguity was its key feature.


Initial reviews regarded it only as a frightening ghost story, but, in the 1930s, some critics suggested that the supernatural elements were figments of the governess' imagination. In the century following its publication, critical analysis of the novella underwent several major transformations. The Turn of the Screw is considered a work of both Gothic and horror fiction. The novella follows a governess who, caring for two children at a remote estate, becomes convinced that the grounds are haunted. In October 1898, it was collected in The Two Magics, published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly (January 27 – April 16, 1898).
