This tale was written in summer 1892: following two notebook entries, made in March and May, it first appeared in the Christmas number of The graphic at the end of the year. Subsequently the tale was placed by James in his 1893 book collection, which carried different titles in UK (The private life; etc.) and USA (The wheel of time; etc.) as the contents of the UK publication were split between two US volumes with individual titles (details are given in my bibliography of the tale). A revised text was published in the ‘ghostly’ volume (17) of the New York edition in 1909. Full details of subsequent reprintings can be found on the relevant page of my index to Henry James’s tales in collections.
The etext on this web-site is taken from the first U.K. book edition in The private life (1893), subject to changes required by the editor’s standard editorial method. Four misprints have had to be corrected in preparing this text from the source edition:
|
location in 1893 Osgood, McIlvaine edition |
original text | correction |
|---|---|---|
| page 280, line 3 | ago, | ago. |
| page 288, line 3 | same that | same time that |
| page 292, line 13 | large | large, |
| page 327, line 19 | said me | said to me |
Because of the production method the text has been proof-read twice, but only by this editor, so it is possible that an error has slipped through both times – offers of proofing assistance will be gratefully received by Adrian Dover.
this note
© 2002
part of an etext edition of
Owen Wingrave
on
the Ladder : a Henry James website