The American

novel by James
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The American, novel by Henry James, published serially in 1876 in The Atlantic Monthly and in book form a year later and produced as a four-act play in 1891. The American is the story of a self-made American millionaire, Christopher Newman, whose guilelessness and forthrightness are set in contrast to the arrogance and cunning of a family of French aristocrats, the Bellegardes, whose daughter he unsuccessfully seeks to marry. In 1868 Newman travels to Paris to submerge himself in European culture and find himself a wife. He courts Claire de Cintré, an aristocratic young widow, but he is deemed socially ...(100 of 165 words)