The Reverberator

Originally serialised in MacMillan Magazine in 1888 and published in book form later that year, The Reverberator is a short novel about how a piece of scandal published in a popular news sheet reduces a Parisian family to infighting. When Francie Dosson, a kind American girl who possesses little or no tact confides to her friend George Flack a piece of information about the family of her fiancé Gaston Probert, only she is surprised when it duly appears in the scandal sheet (the Reverberator of the title) for whom Flack is a correspondent. With this prompt in place, James goes on to analyse the reactions to Dosson's mistake and in particular how her character – essentially honest and self-critical – leads her to accept responsibility for her actions. Subsequently, Gaston Probert is forced to decide whether or not to marry Dosson, a decision that is informed by the intervention of his sister Suzanne.