Portrait of a Lady: caveat emptor

[adam louis stephanides]

I recently decided to read Henry James's Portrait of a Lady.
When I had nearly finished it, I decided to look at some crit-
icism. I then discovered that James had extensively revised
the book over twenty-five years after writing it; that the
revisions substantially altered a number of major characters,
including Isabel Archer, as well as the overall tone of the
book; that it was the revised version that critics praised so
highly; and that the edition I had read was the original (and
nowhere did it indicate the existence of the revision).
So I just read five hundred pages of the wrong book; and I
didn't enjoy it enough to want to immediately go read the
right one. Aargh.

Fortunately, I had borrowed my copy from the library, but at
least one of the editions now in bookstores is the original.
For those wishing to avoid my mistake, if it says it's taken
from the first edition, it's the original; if from the New York
edition, it's the revision. One quick way to spot the difference
in the text itself is to look at the beginning of Chapter 3.
In the original, the second sentence of this chapter ends with
the word "softness." In the revision, the word is "suavity."

--Adam