A strange one this, even by James’s standards! But I think it does tell us something valuable about the way the past is constructed by the memory. Perhaps, in this age of ubiquitous photographing and videoing, people are less at the mercy of their memories than in the past – or perhaps their memories are less reliable because of the technology – but there is still plenty of scope for re-inventing oneself... just don’t let it take over the present!
For details of the text sources and subsequent critical discussion see the bibliography. You may be interested in details of any problems I encountered while editing the source text for its presentation here, which can be found on a separate page, otherwise just start reading.
Adrian Dover
this introduction
© 2002
part of an etext edition of
Maud-Evelyn
on
the Ladder : a Henry James website