The Ambassadors

The second of James’s three late masterpieces, was, in its author’s opinion, “the best, all round, of my productions.”

Lambert Strether, a mild middle-aged American of no particular achievements, is dispatched to Paris from the manufacturing empire of Woollett, Massachusetts. The mission conferred on his by his august patron, Mrs Newsome, is to discover what, or who, is keeping her son Chad in the notorious city of pleasure, and to bring him home.