This is my favorite Henry James story. Short and to the point, it is based on an editor who tests the limits of his conscience. His obsession with Jeffrey Aspern drives him to use two women to get private papers he believes the aunt, Aspern’s muse, must still hold. Based on a story about Claire Claremont, Byron’s lover, it explores the conscience through a first person narrative. James focuses on the art of narration in and of itself. The narrator’s self obsession brings into question every comment that he makes about “Miss Tina.” It is a novel of ideas that explores the means of storytelling that James finds himself fascinated with in other works such as “The Private Life.”