The Aspern Papers and Other Stories

Venice in the 1880s: the Misses Bordereau have retired to their vast palace in a musty corner of this magic city, where love and life sit cheek by jowl with greed and decay. Into their lives comes and unscrupulous critic, hell-bent on discovering the papers of the late Jeffrey Aspern, a world-famous American poet and, some sixty years before, the lover of Miss Juliana. Miss Juliana is ancient, aloof and imperious. More accessible by far is Miss Tina, middle-aged and frumpish, but also completely unpredictable.