Abstract

Abstract:

Ever since 1950, when Robert E. Young (then an undergraduate student at Stanford) made the startling discovery that two chapters of Henry James's self-described masterpiece, The Ambassadors (1903), had been printed in reverse order, scholars and bibliographers have been trying to figure out (and sometimes even to justify) why this happened. How could an author, renowned for his meticulous concern for matters of form, have made such a blunder? And then repeat it, when the novel was included, without correction, in the New York Edition? This essay untangles the evidence and the conflicting claims that have thus far been advanced to propose a new scenario to help us better understand the textual condition of The Ambassadors.

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