One of the least known of James' novels - and yet the only one that
is uniformly American, Boston rejected it as a satire unflattering
to their ego; in those days apparently Boston banning could break -
not make - a book. Perhaps the American literary taste of the
period could not relish the astringent quality of the book, the
irony and the criticism of the American way of life. Today it reads
as one of his most modern books, well worth this re-introduction,
in a year when James appears to be again coming into his own.
(Kirkus Reviews)
'"Don't you care for human progress?" Miss Chancellor went on. "I don't know - I never saw any. Are you going to show me some?"'
In The Bostonians, Henry James tackled one of the burning issues of his day - 'the woman question'. The story centres on the struggle between Basil Ransom, a young Mississippi lawyer, and Olive Chancellor, a wealthy feminist, for exclusive possession of the beautiful Verena Tarrant. One of the most humorous and most vibrant of James's novels, The Bostonians is, as Richard Lansdown says, also one of his most contentious: 'In no other novel did James reveal more of himself, his society and his era, and of the human condition, caught as it is between the blind necessity of progress and the urge to retain the old.'
This edition contains a new introduction, explanatory notes, and two appendices: an extract from De Tocqueville on democratic despotism and extracts from James's American Scene. It is also the only current edition which retains the three-book division of the novel which James intended.
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