Washington Square

The first scholarly edition of this popular Henry James novel, providing full socio-historical context and textual history.

This first scholarly edition of Washington Square, one of Henry James' most iconic works, presents a rare instance of an illustrated full-length text by James. Leading scholars undertake extensive annotation and contextualisation, provide a full introduction, and present a complete textual history, comparing the novel's serial and book publications.The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. Published in two volumes in 1880, Washington Square dramatises the plight of Catherine Sloper, a rich heiress, whose father, a successful doctor, identifies her one suitor, Morris Townsend, as a fortune-hunter. The novel thus draws on the sentimental tradition, which it develops with subtle, sympathetic irony, in a realist direction. This edition is the first to provide a full account of the context in which the book was composed and received, and to include the original illustrations by Punch-cartoonist George Du Maurier. Extensive explanatory notes enable modern readers to understand its nuanced historical, cultural and literary references, and its complex textual history.