Isabel Archer, a young woman of intelligence, imagination and beauty, travels from nineteenth-century America to England and across Europe on a journey that encompasses not only continents, but the crossing from innocence to experience. Miriam Margolyes brings a unique vitality to this reading of Henry James’ masterpiece.

The Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1880.


The Portrait of a Lady was turned into a film in 1996 by New Zealand director Jane Campion, starring Nicole

In 1968 the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) produced a television mini-series version of The Portrait of a Lady, starring Suzanne Neve as Isabel and Richard Chamberlain as Ralph Touchett.

This production was originally broadcast in twenty episodes over four weeks on BBC Radio 4. This release is derived from the four weekly 'omnibus' broadcasts which contained five episodes each

Read by Miriam Margolyes.

About the Author:
Kidman as Isabel, John Malkovich as Osmond, and Barbara Hershey as Madame Merle.
Henry James (1843-1916), born in New York and eventually settling in England, wrote some twenty novels, many short stories, and a staggering number of letters. Geoffrey Moore was general editor for the works of Henry James in Penguin Classics. He died in 1999. Patricia Crick, one-time scholar of Girton College, Cambridge, is a teacher of modern languages.