Washington Square (Oxford World's Classics)

by HenryJames (Author), Mark Le Fanu (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.25

  The inspiration of James's Washington Square (1881) was an anecdote told him by Fanny Kemble about a jilted heiress. The only child of a rich New York physician, shy, unattractive Catherine Sloper falls an easy victim to the attentions of a good-looking fortune-hunter. The clever domineering father whom she adores attempts to blight Catherine's feelings for her suitor, only to succeed in blighting her affection for him. Meanwhile, her meddling aunt, intent on stirring the fires of romance, threatens to turn Catherine's tragic experience into farce.

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.25

  Introduction and Notes by Ian F.A. Bell, Professor of English Literature, University of Keele. Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 1870's, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 1840s, similarly a period of considerable turbulence as the United States experienced the onset of rapid commercial and industrial expansion. Through the relationships between Austin Sloper, a celebrated physician, and his sister Lavinia Penniman, his daughter Catherine, and Catherine's suitor, Morris Townsend, James observes the contemporary scene as a site of competing styles and performances where authentic expression cannot be articulated or is subject to suppression.

• New

  Paperback
  2001

  $6.72

  Introduction and Notes by Ian F.A. Bell, Professor of English Literature, University of Keele. Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 1870's, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 1840s, similarly a period of considerable turbulence as the United States experienced the onset of rapid commercial and industrial expansion. Through the relationships between Austin Sloper, a celebrated physician, and his sister Lavinia Penniman, his daughter Catherine, and Catherine's suitor, Morris Townsend, James observes the contemporary scene as a site of competing styles and performances where authentic expression cannot be articulated or is subject to suppression.