An American woman of intelligence and means chooses badly. Isabel Archer's marriage to Gilbert Osmond is laid out with such psychological exactness that the suspense is moral rather than plot-driven. The silent leap between chapters 35 and 42 — the years of her ruined marriage condensed into a single, terrible page of reflection — is the most famous ellipsis in English fiction. James's first masterpiece.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.