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"The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. Widely considered James's first great work of fiction and highly innovative in its narrative techniques, The Portrait of a Lady follows the story of an ardent, idealistic American heroine, Isabel Archer, in a cosmopolitan Europe. It explores individual freedom amidst confining circumstance, romantic choice, and the consequences of disillusionment and betrayal. This edition, based on the most reliable of the work's first book appearances (Macmillan, 1882), provides an authoritative text of one of James's finest long novels, with extensive annotations, a detailed textual history and an analysis of the reasons for its long-held popular appeal. It will be of particular interest not only to James scholars, but also book historians and students of nineteenth-century Anglo-American literature and culture"-- "This edition aims to represent James's fictional career as it evolves, with a fresh and expanded awareness of its changing contexts and an informed sense of his developing style, technique and concerns. Consequently, it does not attempt to base its choices on the principle of the 'last lifetime edition', which in the case of Henry James is monumentally embodied in the twenty-four volumes of the NYE, the author's selection of nine longer novels (six of them in two volumes) and fifty-eight shorter novels and tales, and including eighteen specially composed Prefaces"-- Machine generated contents note: General editors' preface; General chronology of James' life and writings; Introduction; Textual introduction; Chronology of composition and production; Bibliography; The Portrait of a Lady; Glossary of foreign words and phrases; Notes; Textual variants; List of emendations; Appendices
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