Publisher's Synopsis
Manderley Press is delighted to announce that Colm Tóibín will introduce a brand-new edition of the New York literary classic Washington Square by Henry James.
Washington Square was first published in 1880 and has since become one of the best-loved and most widely admired novels by Henry James, inspiring writers, artists and playwrights for nearly 150 years.
To showcase this beautiful new edition of the book, we commissioned the acclaimed novelist and literary citic Colm Tóibín to pen a new introduction.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel about James’s life, The Master, Tóibín is perfectly placed to take a fresh look at this well-loved classic. He is an expert in the life and works of Henry James and will re-examine the novel in light of the author’s connections to its New York setting.
Washington Square is the only work of fiction James ever wrote that was named for an actual place – he grew up close by at 21 Washington Place (now 13 Washington Square North, which is owned by NYU and is used as faculty housing for members of their School of Social Work) – and this new edition of his work will evaluate how far this iconic New York location directly influenced the setting of the novel.
The book was adapted for Broadway in the 1940s, and subsequently became a ballet, choreographed by Rudolf Nureyev for the Paris Opera in 1985. Later came films such as The Heiress (1949) and Washington Square in 1997 (starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, Ben Chaplin and Maggie Smith) – each inspired by James’s original book.
More recently, the American author Hanya Yanagihara’s 2022 novel To Paradise was strongly influenced by Washington Square – the first section of her book taking its title from the novel and loosely following the same setup.
