Washington Square [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION I Whhn between 1907 and 1909 the monumental edition of James's works dedicated to his native New ^'ork appeared in its twenty-four volumes, the admirer of James might have been disappointed not to have found among them a reissue — revised, updated, rewritten (as all his earlier works had been rewritten for this massive project) — of the short, witty masterpiece of 1880 entitled Washington Square. Neither as a matter of fact were two other masterpieces of a roughly contemporaneous period of James's creation included: The Bostonians (1886) and — like Washington Square a nouvelle rather than a full-dress novel— The Europeans (1878). We cannot help but speculate why these particular volumes were omitted. Might it have had something to do with a dissatisfaction, on James's part, concerning their treatment of the American 'scene' ? — all these works being united, obviously, by their setting in, their preoccupation with, American society. Or was it perhaps simply a question of room? Perhaps there is no deep significance—only the inevitable preferences that an author is allowed to harbour, as the years go by, for certain of his works over others. Still, the preferences themselves, or the dispreferences, are interesting, for they bring into focus a problem emphasized by the record we possess in writing that not so long previously James had attempted to reread Washington Square—and failed. ' He had in other words condemned it as so poor an effort, among the early works, as not to be susceptible to the attempt to elevate its stature through the usual processes of revision. • See Leon Edel, Henry James: The Master (London, 1972), P- 332.