'You think . . . that I had better get married just in order to be as I was before?' Maggie Verver, a young American heiress, and her widowed father Adam, a billionaire collector of objets d'art, lead a life of wealth and refinement in London. They are both getting married- Maggie to Prince Amerigo, an impoverished Italian aristocrat, and Adam to the beautiful but penniless Charlotte Stant, a friend of his daughter. But both father and daughter are unaware that their new conquests share a secret - one for which all concerned must pay the price. Henry James's late, great work is a highly charged study of adultery, jealousy and possession that both continues, and challenges, his theme of confrontation between American innocence and European experience. Part of a series of new Penguin Classics editions of Henry James's works, this edition contains a chronology, suggested further reading, a glossary, notes and an introduction by Ruth Bernard Yeazell discussing James's original conception of the novel and later changes made to its structure and characters. 'One of the greatest pieces of fiction ever written' A. N. WILSON 'A wonderfully luminous drama' GORE VIDAL Edited with an introduction and notes by RUTH BERNARD YEAZELL Series editor PHILIP HORNE