Washington Square

When timid and plain Catherine Sloper acquires a dashing and determined suitor, her father, convinced that the young man is nothing more than a fortune-hunter, decides to put a stop to their romance. Torn between her desire to win her father's love and approval and her passion for the first man who has ever declared his love for her, Catherine faces an agonising dilemma, and becomes all too aware of the restrictions that others seek to place on her freedom.

James's masterly novel deftly interweaves the public and private faces of nineteenth-century New York society; it is also a deeply moving study of innocence destroyed.

About the Author

Born in New York in 1843 of Irish and Scottish ancestry and educated in New York, London and Paris, Henry James is best known for his cosmopolitan and often haunting portraits of European and American life. He was also a prolific writer of literary criticism and shorter fiction. James settled in England in 1876, where he spent most of the rest of his life and completed his best-known work. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times but never won it. He died in 1916 and, despite becoming a British subject shortly before his death, his ashes were buried in Massachusetts.