Washington Square is a tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, unemotional father. The plot of the novel is based upon a true story told to James by his close friend, British actress Fanny Kemble. The book is often compared with Jane Austen's work for the clarity and grace of its prose and its intense focus on family relationships. Dr. Austin Sloper, a wealthy and highly successful physician, lives in Washington Square, New York with his daughter Catherine. Catherine is a sweet-natured young woman who is a great disappointment to her father, being physically plain and, he believes, dull in terms of personality and intellect. His sister, Lavinia Penniman, a meddlesome woman with a weakness for romance and melodrama, is the only other member of the doctor's household. Henry James (1843–1916) was an American-British writer who spent most of his writing career in Britain. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism.

An illuminating history of Washington Square Park and its inhabitants.

Tells the stories of a fortune hunter, an American heiress living in Europe, and a naive young woman torn between love and idealism.

Henry James’s Daisy Miller was an immediate sensation when it was first published in 1878 and has remained popular ever since. In this novella, the charming but inscrutable young American of the title shocks European society with her casual indifference to its social mores. The novella was popular in part because of the debates it sparked about foreign travel, the behaviour of women, and cultural clashes between people of different nationalities and social classes. This Broadview edition presents an early version of James’s best-known novella within the cultural contexts of its day. In addition to primary materials about nineteenth-century womanhood, foreign travel, medicine, philosophy, theatre, and art—some of the topics that interested James as he was writing the story—this volume includes James’s ruminations on fiction, theatre, and writing, and presents excerpts of Daisy Miller as he rewrote it for the theatre and for a much later and heavily revised edition.

Philadelphia's Washington Square, a shaded 6.6-acre plot near the nation's birthplace at Independence Hall, has been a focal point of the city's history for more than 300 years. Designated by William Penn in 1683 as an open space, the square served as a potter's field for its first 100 years. The remains of more than 2,000 indigents, soldiers, and yellow fever victims rest beneath its sod. By 1825, the graveyard was closed and the square was redesigned as a public promenade. Rude huts on its periphery gave way to fashionable middle-class homes. Washington Square became a destination for publishing and advertising, home to the likes of J. B. Lippincott, W. B. Saunders, Curtis Publishing Company, Farm Journal, and advertising giant N. W. Ayer. In the 1950s, its Society Hill neighborhood was restored, and a memorial to the unknown soldier of the American Revolution was dedicated in the square. Today the square is again attracting the affluent with condominiums in its converted publishing houses.