Henry James

The Princess Casamassima

A note on the text

by Adrian Dover

This long novel (approx. 209,900 words) was written in 1885-1886 and first appeared in the Atlantic monthly, in fourteen installments from September 1885 to October 1886 inclusive. Unusually for James, early parts were published before the work was complete and, coming so soon after The Bostonians (serialised February 1885 to February 1886), he found it hard to keep up with the publisher’s schedule. No wonder he concentrated on rather shorter fictions in the next few years! Details of early publications and selected later reprints of The Princess Casamassima may be found on the bibliography page for this edition.

The etext on this website re-presents the first UK book edition, published in three volumes (October 1886), subject to changes required by the editor’s standard editorial method. James made a few alterations to the text between the serial and book editions but these will not be noted here apart from mentioning that he changed Mr Vetch’s forename from the original ‘Theophilus’ to ‘Anastasius’ and that the location of the Muniments’ rooms, or at least the description of the location of these, was altered from ‘South Lambeth’ (which distinctly lacks euphony!) to ‘Camberwell’.

Over 200 emendations have been made in preparing this text from the source edition, required by a mixture of inconsistent type-setting, poor proof-reading and, occasionally, poor copy-editing in the original. This may seem a large number but some 45% are accounted for by two editorial decisions: (a) occurrences of ‘daresay’ have been normalised to the majority ‘dare say’ and (b) punctuation after a closing parenthesis has been standardised to that which would occur if the parenthetical interjection were not present (which seems to be the intention). The resulting 22 ‘daresay’ and 76 comma changes are summarised in three separate tables further down this page, in order not to clutter details of the other 118, mostly individual, emendations, which are given first.

Among the individual changes only a few of the inconsistent spellings or hyphenations occur more than once. These have been standardised on the majority version present within the source or, where equal numbers of the variants occur here, on the basis of contemporary examples in the Oxford English Dictionary

One set of changes result from the particularly strange variation between ‘:’ and ‘–’ in linking a descriptive paragraph to reported speech, on the next line, of the character just invoked: I have standardised on the majority ‘–’, although with some reservations since the colon is usually used for the same function within paragraphs, and is also used at the end of paragraphs in the New York edition text; however the majority reading in the 1886 edition is so heavily weighted to the en-dash that I have ‘corrected’ the three with colons, which all occur in the first fifty pages of the first volume. Later similar places having comma or full-stop, apparently in error, have similarly been ‘dashed’.

A number of trailings-off of speech seem to have suffered inversion of the dash and the closing quote-mark; again I came to the conclusion that no specific reasons required retention of this quirk. You can at least check up on me about these changes from the links in the following table. A few places remain where I could not make up my mind that a change of punctuation was logically necessary, so you will have to live with these if you spot them.

Spaces, shown as <space> in the table, more obviously result from missing or dropped sorts in the printing-house (incidentally the Monotype machine, which cast type in whole lines as setting proceeded, was invented in 1887, the year after this novel was published, although used intially for newspaper rather than book printing).

Copy-editing oversights, such as ‘Lambeth’ and ‘Peddlington’, have comments in notes linked from the main text: thus the links here for such cases are, like the other links, to the text and you will have to click twice to see the explanation – sorry! Some of the spelling errors, and the failure to change one required occurrence of ‘Lambeth’ to ‘Camberwell’, suggest that the UK book edition was type-set from a marked-up copy of the US serial parts or their galley-proofs.

Note that, in the following table, my usual single- to double-quote change on speech is shown without comment if it falls within the required alteration.

location in source	original text	correction
page and line
Volume 1
p. 3, l. 11	house door	house-door
p. 14, l. 15	exclamation:	exclamation –
p. 24, l. 21	duty);	duty):
p. 24, l. 26	just:	just;
p. 30, l. 6	bachelor,	bachelor;
p. 37, l. 20	said:	said –
p. 41, l. 22	abruptly:	abruptly –
p. 49, l. 30	lay ng	laying
p. 53, l. 4	beveled	bevelled
p. 61, l. 8	good humouredly	good-humouredly
p. 62, l. 25	half hour	half-hour
p. 67, l. 2	peel	peal
p. 106, l. 2	hair-dresser	hairdresser
p. 107, l. 23	interne?	interne?
p. 107, l. 24	Mon Dieu	Mon Dieu
p. 124, l. 13	àpropos	à propos
p. 141, l. 15	meant,	meant –
p. 164, l. 19-20	un <newline>happy	un-<newline>happy (split word)
p. 178, l. 2	half hour	half-hour
p. 184, l. 2	fine	fine,
p. 186, l. 6	said again	said, again
p. 186, l. 28	frankness.	frankness:
p. 188, l. 10	back room	back-room
p. 188, l. 27	her.	her:
p. 190, l. 9-10	ac_knowledgement	ac-knowledgement (split word)
p. 195, l. 9	reward	a reward
p. 196, l. 19	half hour	half-hour
p. 217, l. 17-18	what ever	what-ever (split word)
p. 217, l. 19	way.	way.”
p. 219, l. 25	cabinetmaker	cabinet-maker
p. 220, l. 3	armchairs	arm-chairs
p. 220, l. 16	course;	course:
p. 221, l. 12	lad	lad,
p. 221, l. 19	brute,	brute;
p. 222, l. 19	<space>he	she
p. 225, l. 9	patch-work	patchwork
p. 236, l. 17	lamplight	lamp-light
p. 239, l. 30	pillow	pillow.
p. 241, l. 26	spirit-lamp·	spirit-lamp;
p. 243, l. 10	cabinetmaker	cabinet-maker
p. 248, l. 14	Half-an-hour	Half an hour
Volume 2
p. 4, l. 23	you,	you,”
p. 14, l. 10	clever,	clever,”
p. 14, l. 30	reason’—	reason—”
p. 15, l. 19	exclaimed<space>	exclaimed,
p. 16, l. 8	see’—	see—”
p. 24, l. 9	naïf	naïf
p. 29, l. 27	<space>You	“You
p. 31, l. 1	before.	before:
p. 35, l. 3	dulness	dullness
p. 37, l. 22	<space> they	if they
p. 47, l. 9	Récit d’une Sœur	Récit d’une Sœur
p. 57, l. 22	Lambeth	Camberwell
p. 60, l. 9	went,	went
p. 60, l. 30	on.	on –
p. 64, l. 11-12	Hyacinth.	Hyacinth –
p. 67, l. 9	now<space>	now,
p. 68, l. 7	<space>Sun	‘Sun
p. 68, l. 8	cause if	cause it
p. 69, l. 27	v’ice	’vice
p. 70, l. 4	think:	think;
p. 70, l. 5	degree;	degree:
p. 78, l. 10	cabinetmaker	cabinet-maker
p. 79, l. 12	on. We	on. “We
p. 87, l. 25	him.	him –
p. 89, l. 16	your	you’re
p. 90, l. 3	fiddlecase	fiddle-case
p. 96, l. 2	raveled	ravelled
p. 108, l. 24	But	but
p. 115, l. 11	much.	much.”
p. 136, l. 13	witness	witnessed
p. 138, l. 15	on,	on:
p. 149, l. 20	portrait.	portrait:
p. 155, l. 29	time	time,
p. 184, l. 12	<space>What	“What
p. 200, l. 24	candle-light	candlelight
p. 209, l. 21	Peddlington	Pedlington
p. 220, l. 7	garni	garni
p. 225, l. 31	discovery<space>	discovery,
p. 227, l. 7	underfed	under-fed
p. 237, l. 6	on:	on –
p. 242, l. 5	Eustace	Eustache
p. 245, l. 17	them?)	them?).
Volume 3
p. 14, l. 5	forebore	forbore
p. 20, l. 27	supersubtle	super-subtle
p. 20, l. 27	forebore	forbore
p. 38, l. 6	question.	question:
p. 39, l. 24	swell!<space>	swell!”
p. 48, l. 25	on:	on –
p. 63, l. 16	<space>Those	“Those
p. 65, l. 30	music hall	music-hall
p. 70, l. 5	catspaw	cat’s-paw
p. 74, l. 29	house door	house-door
p. 81, l. 23	Edgeware	Edgware
p. 115, l. 19	allusion.	allusion –
p. 122, l. 1	lamplight	lamp-light
p. 129, l. 4	own.	own:
p. 132, l. 23	here! . . .	here—!
p. 135, l. 22	curtness.	curtness:
p. 158, l. 4	<space>A	“A
p. 162, l. 13	‘Millicent	Millicent
p. 166, l. 22	indoors	in-doors
p. 167, l. 13	Especially’—	Especially—”
p. 172, l. 11	working classes	working-classes
p. 179, l. 28	hesitation.	hesitation:
p. 182, l. 29	<space>ith	with
p. 197, l. 31	him’–	him—”
p. 198, l. 5	‘At	At
p. 199, l. 16	was	was:
p. 201, l. 11	up-stairs	upstairs
p. 214, l. 23	I suppose	“I suppose
p. 214, l. 28	‘She	She
p. 219, l. 9	you’–	you—”
p. 223, l. 5	Surely	“Surely
p. 239, l. 4 p. 239, l. 21	Das kann sein – das kann sein	Das kann sein – das kann sein
p. 241, l. 13	Schön, schön	Schön, schön

instances of ‘daresay’ converted to ‘dare say’
volume 1	volume 2	volume 3
p. 3, l. 1 p. 80, l. 5 p. 106, l. 4 p. 111, l. 5 p. 112, l. 27 p. 132, l. 10 p. 169, l. 17 p. 182, l. 18 p. 232, l. 30 p. 236, l. 19-20 p. 236, l. 22 p. 237, l. 5 p. 237, l. 16 p. 248, l. 1	p. 13, l. 8 p. 14, l. 14 p. 58, l. 24 p. 76, l. 6 p. 78, l. 14 p. 81, l. 20 p. 89, l. 28 p. 237, l. 10	none

instances of ‘),’ converted to ‘)’ (comma removed)
volume 1	volume 2	volume 3
p. 20, l. 11 p. 22, l. 9 p. 32, l. 7 p. 90, l. 15 p. 120, l. 1 p. 129, l. 1 p. 153, l. 24 p. 156, l. 10 p. 185, l. 7 p. 197, l. 14 p. 215, l. 4 p. 227, l. 23 p. 235, l. 22 p. 236, l. 13	p. 9, l. 27 p. 18, l. 5 p. 21, l. 21 p. 24, l. 15 p. 25, l. 29 p. 35, l. 15 p. 43, l. 4 p. 48, l. 26 p. 71, l. 21 p. 77, l. 9 p. 101, l. 29 p. 119, l. 18 p. 131, l. 8 p. 144, l. 6 p. 148, l. 26 p. 169, l. 20 p. 173, l. 9 p. 174, l. 3 p. 178, l. 29 p. 189, l. 19 p. 194, l. 28 p. 206, l. 30 p. 211, l. 22 p. 212, l. 4 p. 214, l. 20 p. 215, l. 22 p. 222, l. 23 p. 223, l. 8 p. 227, l. 7 p. 238, l. 21 p. 240, l. 22 p. 243, l. 9 p. 243, l. 19 p. 247, l. 16 p. 248, l. 16 p. 249, l. 18	p. 1, l. 4 p. 2, l. 30 p. 8, l. 25 p. 10, l. 10 p. 13, l. 20 p. 21, l. 26 p. 27, l. 17 p. 28, l. 31 p. 40, l. 26 p. 71, l. 17 p. 78, l. 22 p. 92, l. 18 p. 146, l. 9 p. 165, l. 22 p. 181, l. 27 p. 212, l. 12

instances of ‘)’ converted to ‘),’ (comma added)
volume 1	volume 2	volume 3
p. 181, l. 24 p. 234, l. 4	p. 38, l. 30 p. 141, l. 29 p. 193, l. 10	p. 180, l. 28

Because of the production method the text has been proof-read twice, but only by this editor, so it is possible that some errors have slipped through twice – offers of proofing assistance will be gratefully received by Adrian Dover.