The Golden Bowl by Henry James is today’s Free eBook of the Day.

This 1904 novel deals with themes of marriage and adultery in England and Italy. Here is an excerpt: “The Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was one of the modern Romans who find by the Thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the Tiber. Brought up on the legend of the City to which the world paid tribute, he recognised in the present London much more than in contemporary Rome the real dimensions of such a case. If it was a question of an Imperium, he said to himself, and if one wished, as a Roman, to recover a little the sense of that, the place to do so was on London Bridge, or even, on a fine afternoon in May, at Hyde Park Corner.”

Merchant Ivory made a film version in 2000. The film’s trailer is posted above.

Project Gutenberg has the free download.

For more free eBooks, check out our Free eBook of the Month archive.

Today’s Free eBook of the Day is The Wings of the Dove by Henry James.

In this melodramatic novel, James deals with issues of love, wealth and illness in early 1900s London. Here is an excerpt: “SHE waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him.”

Google’s eBookstore has the free download. When you finish the novel, check out Iain Softley’s 1997 film adaptation of the work.

For more free eBooks, check out our Free eBook of the Day archive.