Meander through Provence in the company of Henry James with this vivid
collection of travel writing taken from his little-known book A Little Tour
in France In 1882, a year after the publication of his wildly successful
The Portrait of a Lady, which dealt with the difficulties faced by American
expatriate Daisy Miller in Europe, Henry James set out a six-week tour of
southeastern France, taking in Tours, Bourges, Nantes, Toulouse, and Arles.
Although a sometime resident of Paris, James was convinced that the soul of
France resided not in the capital but in the provinces, and he set out to
find it. Beginning in Touraine, James followed the course of the Rhône
north to Burgundy, writing articles on architecture, literature, and
personal observation that were serialized in the Atlantic Monthly. The
resulting work is a fascinating patchwork, switching seamlessly between the
broad strokes of classic travel writing and the smallest details of human
behavior for which James is best known. This is at once an excellent
example of James' prose writing and an outstanding work of travel writing
in its own right.