No poet dies without leaving behind a mistress, a lover, or a woman to whom he can spread his secrets and deposit fragments of his works, letters, and poems. In "The Asperne Papers", Henry James creates the character of the poet Geoffrey Asperne, who was full of the world and occupied people in his life, but he died early. However, his death did not go unnoticed, as an American publisher became curious to reveal the secrets of papers that he learned from his friends that the glorious poet had deposited with his mistress, who had reached a miserable age at that time and lived behind walls of oblivion with her niece in Venice. The ambitious publisher finds nothing to dissuade him from his determination to trace the progress of these papers, seize them, and publish them publicly. In order to do this, he resorts to hiding his true identity and renting rooms in the old mistress's palace, which has been worn out for ages. The events, most of which take place in Venice, accelerate, and we witness heated conversations about literature, culture, and social life between the publisher - the nameless narrator - and the old mistress, the owner of the palace. Will the publisher eventually get the papers and get their hands on them? What is the role of the mistress's niece in facilitating the ways for him to achieve his goals?