Felix Young and his sister the Baroness Munster descend upon their Puritan cousins, the Wentworths, in the Arcadian setting of the New England countryside of mid-nineteenth century America. The inevitable clash between European epieureanism and Puritan restraint ensues, providing humour,paradox, and some revealing insight.

When in 1877 henry James was was commissioned to write a romance in four parts for the Atlantic Monthly, he was tremendously enthusiastic, and in a letter to the editor, William Dean Howells, he promised a work that would be as dazzling as a "sun-spot’and that would‘have "the nearest little figure in the world". The Europeans is indeed a brilliant creation in the taut novella form of which James was so fond, and in which some of his best fiction is cast. Written after Roderick Hudson and The Americans, but before Portrait of a Lady, it deals with the clash of European and American outlooks, a theme that pervades his early writing, and to which he returned in his last period with works such as Wings of a Dove, "The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl……

INTRODUCTION

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII