The Bostonians

by James, Henry; Gooder, R. D.

• ISBN13: 9780192834423
• ISBN10: 0192834428
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-07-23
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This brilliant satire of the women's rights movement in America is the story of the ravishing inspirational speaker Verena Tarrant and the bitter struggle between two distant cousins who seek to control her. Will the privileged Boston feminist Olive Chancellor succeed in turning her beloved ward into a celebrated activist and lifetime companion? Or will Basil Ransom, a conservative southern lawyer, steal Verena's heart and remove her from the limelight? ""The Bostonians" has a vigor and blithe wit found nowhere else in James," writes A. S. Byatt in her Introduction. "It is about idealism in a democracy that is still recovering from a civil war bitterly fought for social ideals . . . Ýwritten¨ with a ferocious, precise, detailed--and wildly comic--realism."

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Note on the text	xxxiv
Further reading	xxxv
Chronology of Henry James	xli
The Bostonians	1	(436)
Appendix 1: from James's Notebook	437	(3)
Appendix 2: the dramatic date of The Bostonians	440	(1)
Appendix 3: the social geography of Boston	441	(4)
Notes	445	(13)
Map of Boston	458