‘The Princess Casamassima’ / Henry James
in : The Atlantic monthly, vols 56-58
disposition:
chapters 1-3 in vol. 56, no. 335, September 1885, p. 289-311;
chapters 4-7 in vol. 56, no. 336, October 1885, p. 433-459;
chapters 8-11 in vol. 56, no. 337, November 1885, p. 577-602;
chapters 12-13 in vol. 56, no. 338, December 1885, p. 721-738;
chapters 14-16 in vol. 57, no. 339, January 1886, p. 66-90;
chapters 17-21 in vol. 57, no. 340, February 1886, p. 145-178;
chapters 22-24 in vol. 57, no. 341, March 1886, p. 326-351;
chapters 25-38 in vol. 57, no. 342, April 1886, p. 485-507;
chapters 29-32 in vol. 57, no. 343, May 1886, p. 645-668;
chapters 33-36 in vol. 57, no. 344, June 1886, p. 789-813;
chapters 37-38 in vol. 58, no. 345, July 1886, p. 58-76;
chapters 39-40 in vol. 58, no. 346, August 1886, p. 209-228;
chapters 41-44 in vol. 58, no. 347, September 1886, p. 349-375;
chapters 45-47† in vol. 58, no. 348, October 1886, p. 433-448;
originally intended to appear in twelve issues, James was writing the novel as serialisation went on and it eventually extended to fourteen; you can view this original online through the page images at the Cornell University Making of America site (select The Atlantic monthly and then the year); also a transcription of this text has been mounted by Blackmask Online (which is just as well, as the automatic OCR on the Cornell site is riddled with errors!)
† note: the final installment was issued with incorrect chapter numbering 44-46: 44 having in fact been the last chapter in the penultimate installment; these were corrected to 45-47 in the subsequent monograph editions
The Princess Casamassima: a novel / by Henry James. - London; New York : Macmillan, 1886. - 3v.; 252, 257, 242 p.
the first book publication, in the then still traditional three volume format,
issued on 1886-10-22 in an edition of 750 copies; in this and all later issues
the original five ‘books’ into which the 47 chapters were grouped
(1-11, 12-21, 22-32, 33-42 and 43-47) was increased to six by redividing
books 3 and 4 into three, books 3-5 (22-28, 29-37 and 38-42), leading to the unbalanced division
The Princess Casamassima: a novel / by Henry James. - New York : Macmillan, 1886; London : Macmillan, 1887. - 596 p.
the first one-volume publication, published in America on 1886-11-02 and in Britain in 1887-08
The Princess Casamassima / by Henry James. - New York : Scribner’s; London : Macmillan, 1908. - (The novels and tales of Henry James: New York edition, Vols 5-6). - 2v.; xxii, 362; 430 p.
contents: vol. 1 : books 1-2 (chapters 1-21); vol. 2 : books 3-6 (chapters 22-47)
the are the usual raft of alterations to the text, made by James so that the novel would fit better in his scheme for the ‘definitive’ edition
The Princess Casamassima / by Henry James. - London : Macmillan, 1921. - 2 v.; 20 cm. - (The novels and stories of of Henry James, Vols 10-11)
the first major collection of James’s fiction after his death; in thirty-five volumes: an expanded version of the New York edition plan is used, so the contents of these two volumes are the same as NYE 5-6
The Princess Casamassima / by Henry James. - New York : Harpers, 1947. - 511 p.
The Princess Casamassima / by Henry James. - New York : Harpers, 1959. - 511 p. - (Harper torchbooks, TB 1005)
reprinting the New York edition text; the introduction, by Clinton F. Oliver, is reprinted from The Antioch review where it appears in the Summer 1947 issue, in a slightly different form, as ‘Henry James as social critic’
The Princess Casamassima / by Henry James. - London : John Lehmann, 1950. - 511 p.; 20 cm. - (The Chiltern library)
has a brief introductory note by Michael Swan
The Bodley Head Henry James. - Vol. 10 : The Princess Casamassima / with the
author’s preface and an introduction by Leon Edel. - London : Bodley
Head, 1972. - 618 p.; 20 cm. - ISBN
according to the note of the t.p.v., the text is from the New York edition; Edel’s introduction (pages 5-12) highlights the novel’s background in French ‘naturalist’ fiction and contemporary revolutionary news, examining why, despite these, it remains compelling for the present-day reader
The Princess Casamassima / Henry James. - Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1977. - 536 p. - (Penguin modern classics)
uses the New York edition text and includes the author’s preface, but with no other introduction or notes
The Princess Casamassima / Henry James, edited by Derek Brewer and Patricia Crick. - Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1982. - xxiv, 608 p. - (Penguin classics)
a completely revised Penguin issue, as part of the publisher’s move into the academic market for classics, although retaining the Sargent portrait of Lady Agnew as the cover illustration; I haven’t seen a copy myself, but from other bibliographies it seems a change was made to use the 1886 text; an introduction and notes are provided
The Princess Casamassima / Henry James, introduction by Bernard Richards. - London : Dent, 1991. - 596 p. - (Everyman’s Library Classics)
[not yet seen]
‘Preface’ by Henry James
in : The Princess Casamassima
(New York edition), – see
above;
reprinted in : The art of the novel: critical prefaces / by Henry
James, with an introduction by Richard P. Blackmur. - New York, London :
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934 – pages n-M
relevant text available on this web-site
Henry James / by Leon Edel. - Vol. 3 : The middle years, 1884-1894. - London : Hart-Davis, 1963 – pages 116-128
The life of Henry James / by Leon Edel. - Vol. 1 : 1843-1889. - Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1977 – pages 770-781
Henry James: a life / by Leon Edel. - London : Collins, 1987 – pages 324-328
these are the sections of Edel’s famous biography which deal with his interpretation of this novel as [...]
The library of Henry James / compiled and edited with essays by Leon Edel and
Adeline R. Tintner. - Ann Arbor, Mich.; London : UMI Research Press,
1987. - (Studies in modern literature ; no. 90). -
lists the known contents of Henry James’s personal library, compiled from sale catalogues and surviving association copies; Adeline R. Tintner’s article ‘The books in the books: what Henry James’s characters read and why’ (p. 69-96, revised from a 1978 article in A. B. Bookman’s weekly) discusses The Princess as ‘James’s “library” book’ because of the number of literary and book references; in discussing Lady Aurora’s ‘puerile library’ Tintner, in so far as one can make out among the missing quotation marks, gives the wrong death-date for the Marquise de Crequi (although the correct date appears in the title given in the list of James’s library), fails to name the author of the Récit d’une sœur and mis-identifies J. T. de Saint-Germain as the eighteenth century necromancer and adventurer ‘Saint-Germain’ instead of as the pen-name of J.-R. Tardieu; apart from that, it‘s worth a quick look!
Promissory notes: the prescription of the future in The Princess
Casamassima’ by Deborah Esch
in : American literary history vol. 1 ii,
1989, 317-338
[valuable study]
Reading Henry James in French cultural contexts / Pierre A. Walker. - DeKalb,
IL : Northern Illinois University Press, 1995. -
chapter 3 explores in depth the relationship of the novel to Feuillet’s Histoire d’une parisienne (1881) and La veuve (1883), drawing parallels between the Princess and the ‘parisienne’ of the former and between Hyacinth’s fate and that of the hero in the latter; chapter 4 compares Hyacinth to Rastignac, the hero of Balzac’s Le Père Goriot (1835)
The inward revolution: sexual terrorism in The Princess Casamassima
by Elizabeth Carolyn Miller
in : The Henry James review vol. 24 ii,
Spring 2003, 146-167
analyses the female characters to reveal the novel’s ‘pressing concern with gender and the role of women in late-Victorian London’
selective bibliography and critical commentaries
© 2003
part of an etext edition of
The Princess Casamassima
on
the Ladder : a Henry James website