SOURCE: “‘My Bad Things’: James on James,” in Ghosts, Demons, and Henry James: The Turn of the Screw at the Turn of the Century, University of Missouri Press, 1989, pp. 222–41.

In the following essay, Beidler examines James's extratextual comments on The Turn of the Screw in order to gain insight on the story.

Critics of both the evil-ghost and the deluded-governess persuasions are prone to seek corroboration for their theories by quoting Henry James's extratextual statements about the story. They point to his letters to his friends, and they cite his lengthy preface about the story, prepared a decade after the first publication of the story and published as part of the New York Edition in 1908. Some critics of both persuasions find what they think of as ample support for their readings in these after-the-fact authorial statements. Where James's comments do not support their readings, they call him “evasive...