Description

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In The Aspern Papers (1888), Henry James was clearly inspired by Claire Clairmont: stepsister to Mary Shelley and Fanny Wollstonecraft, mother to Lord Byron's daughter Allegra, and alleged lover to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Clairmont famously had a bunch of Shelley's letters, much coveted by others. In "The Aspern Papers," an unnamed American editor rents a room in Venice in the home of Juliana Bordereau, the elderly mistress of Jeffrey Aspern, a deceased Romantic poet, in order to procure from her the poet's papers. Bordereau, a stingy, domineering woman, lives with her timid middle-aged niece, Tina. (The niece was named Tita until James revised the text in 1908.) The manipulative editor, obsessed with possessing the Aspern papers, exhibits progressively unscrupulous behaviour, such as assuming an alias, making false romantic overtures to Tina, and attempting burglary. When Bordereau dies, Tina offers the editor the coveted documents on the condition that he marry her. He initially refuses but returns to negotiate, only to find that Tina, in a display of newfound dignity, has burned the papers.