The Master was published by Picador in 2004 and won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
The novel covers four years in Henry James’s life (1895–1899), beginning with the disastrous opening night of his play Guy Domville — booed by the gallery — and following him through his retreat from London to Lamb House in Rye, Sussex, where he wrote The Turn of the Screw, What Maisie Knew, and The Awkward Age.
Toibin’s James is a man defined by refusal: he will not acknowledge his sexual attraction to men (the sculptor Hendrik Andersen, the valet-companion Morton Fullerton), will not confront what happened to his sister Alice (who spent her life as an invalid and whom he failed to visit as she died), will not respond to the emotional appeals of his friend Constance Fenimore Woolson (whose probable suicide haunts him). He transforms all raw experience into art — and the novel asks whether this transformation is genius or pathology.
The parallel between Toibin and James is deliberate: both are Irish-associated writers in England, both are gay men who write about concealment, both deploy a prose style characterized by what is left unsaid.
Collecting The Master
First edition (Picador, London, 2004): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $25–$50
- Signed first: $60–$120