The Master
In January 1895, Henry James sits in the audience of his play Guy Domville on opening night and is booed off the London stage. The Master tracks James across the next five years, from the wreckage of the theatrical experiment through his retreat to Lamb House in Rye, his near-romances with younger men he could never quite acknowledge, the suicide of his friend Constance Fenimore Woolson, and the country-house visits that fed his late great novels. Toibin writes the book entirely from inside James's head, building a portrait of a man who has spent every emotional resource converting what he could not say in life into the prose he could put on the page.
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What you might want to know about The Master
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Colm Toibin's biographical novel follows Henry James across five years of late career, retreat, and unspoken longing in the run-up to his late masterpieces.
The Master (2004) by Colm Toibin is a literary novel about Henry James, the American novelist who lived much of his life in England. It is widely cited as one of the great fictional portraits of an artist.
Yes. The Master won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the LA Times Book Prize for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize.
The Master was written by Colm Toibin, published in 2004 by Scribner.
The Master is 352 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Master takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
The Master is a standalone novel by Colm Toibin, not part of a series.
The Master is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.