The Turn of the Screw adaptations and reworkings in a variety of media, and these reworkings and adaptations have, themselves, been analysed in the academic literature on Henry James and neo-Victorian culture. It was adapted to an opera by Benjamin Britten, which premiered in 1954, and the opera has been filmed on numerous occasions. The novella was adapted as a ballet score (1980) by Luigi Zaninelli, and separately as a ballet (1999) by Will Tucket for the Royal Ballet. Harold Pinter directed "The Innocents" (1950), a Broadway play which was an adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw", and a subsequent eponymous stage play, adapted
The Turn of the Screw Screw" was intended as anything other than a straightforward ghost story, and James certainly wrote ghost stories that did not depend on the narrator's imagination. For example, "Owen Wingrave" includes a ghost that causes its title character's sudden death, although no one actually sees it. James's "Notebooks" entry indicates that he was inspired originally by a tale he heard from Edward White Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury. There are indications that the story James was told was about an incident in Hinton Ampner, where in 1771 a woman named Mary Ricketts moved from her home after seeing the apparitions of