This revised and expanded Norton Critical Edition of The Ambassadors again includes the author's preface as well as the most significant variants of the three earlier editions of the novel published in James's lifetime.
The importance of these variants and the conditions under which the novel was written and revised―conditions leading to the continuing controversy over the order of the chapters―are discussed in the editor's rewritten and updated essay on editions and revisions of The Ambassadors.As often as possible, the annotations to the text have been made by referring to James's other writings.
A map of Strether's Paris and a virtually unknown photograph of James, which originally appeared with the serial of The Ambassadors, have been added to this Second Edition, and the original frontispieces to the New York Edition of the novel have been reproduced in their proper sequence for the first time.
"The Author on the Novel" contains James's notebook entries on the inspiration for The Ambassadors as well as the long, remarkable preliminary statement that the author drew up before writing his novel. The selection of James's letters on The Ambassadors has also been expanded for the Second Edition.
"Criticism" is comprised of fourteen essays that represent more than seventy years of analysis of The Ambassadors, by H. M. Alden, Percy Lubbock, E. M. Forster, F. O. Matthiessen, F. R. Leavis, Joseph Warren Beach, Joan Bennett, Leon Edel, Ian Watt, Sallie Sears, Nicola Bradbury, Maud Ellmann, Millicent Bell, and Philip Fisher.
A Chronology and an expanded Selected Bibliography are also included.
About the Author
American author Henry James (1843–1916) spent most of his career in Europe and ultimately adopted British citizenship. A prolific writer of criticism, biography, and travel-related books and articles, James is known above all for his highly influential novels, which frequently explore the clash of Old and New World cultures.
S. P. Rosenbaum is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of two volumes of the Bloomsbury Group’s literary history, Victorian Bloomsbury and Edwardian Bloomsbury. In addition to The Ambassadors he has also edited A Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson; The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs, Commentary, and Criticism; Virginia Woolf’s Women & Fiction: The Manuscript Versions of A Room of One’s Own; and A Bloomsbury Group Reader.
