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Introduction and Notes by Ian F.A. Bell, Professor of English Literature, University of Keele. Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 187's, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 184s, similarly a period of considerable turbulence as the United States experienced the onset of rapid commercial and industrial expansion. Through the relationships between Austin Sloper, a celebrated physician, and his sister Lavinia Penniman, his daughter Catherine, and Catherine's suitor, Morris Townsend, James observes the contemporary scene as a site of competing styles and performances where authentic expression cannot be articulated or is subject to suppression.
Henry James (1843-1916) was born in New York and had an unconventional childhood, being educated in a variety of schools and living with his family mostly in hotels in England, France and Switzerland. He spent a term at Harvard Law School in 1862, before embarking on his career as a writer and continuing to travel extensively. He was naturalised as a British subject in 1915. James wrote twenty novels, innumerable short stories, many works of criticism or description, a number of plays and two excellent pieces of biography. He is most noted for his methodical construction, individual style, and careful characterisation.
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