The republication of Henry James' only explicitly political novel, The Princess Casamassima, in the Library of America invites a timely rethinking of its troubled reputation. From the first it has been viewed, even by its author, as a problem novel. In a brief notebook entry for Aug. 10, 1885, James complained that he had "never yet become engaged in a novel in which, after I had begun to write and send off my Ms., the details had remained so vague." A couple of weeks later, still "pegging away" at it, he described it as "long-winded" to his friend Grace Norton. James, himself was inclined to blame the problem on his worry over the dim reception of its immediate predecessor, The Bostonians, which critics had attacked with relish on both sides of the Atlantic. Taken at face value, James' confession of a sense of "vagueness" has occasionally been cited as evidence that he didn't know quite what he was doing.

The problem with The Princess Casamassima—which falls in time between James' apprentice years and the later phase which his biographer Leon Edel has designated as that of "The Master"—may be simply stated. Is it truly a political novel; and if it is that, does it report something solid and reliable about the real world?

In a lengthy rehabilitatory essay of 1948—later reprinted in The Liberal Imagination—Lionel Trilling faced the issue squarely and answered the threshold question in the affirmative. The Princess, he insisted, really is a politico-historical novel, exhibiting techniques and concerns, and documentary