Henry James was fascinated by clothing and dress. This book examines, for the first time, the role of dress in reinforcing thematic and symbolic patterns in James's fictional world. Hughes traces a development from the significance of dress in discussion of 'the American Girl' in the early works, through dress as an indicator of social position, to the emergence of the more unstable and threatening aspects of dress, which culminate in the strange case of the coat of changing colours in The Sense of the Past.

Acknowledgements List of Plates List of Illustrations Introduction: Costume and James: Autobiography, Memories and Journalism 'The Principal Interest for Ladies': Daisy Miller and 'The Pension Beaurepas' The Ironic Dresses of Washington Square The 'Colour of Life' in The Portrait of a Lady Milly Theale in Wings of the Dove : 'An Odd-Looking Girl from New York' Signs of the Times: Hats and The Princess Casamassima 'Muffled' and 'Uncovered' in The Ambassadors Depravities of Decoration in The Golden Bowl New Fashioned Ghosts: Conclusion Bibliography Endnotes Index

CLAIR HUGHES is Professor of English and American Literature at the International Christian University in Tokyo. Her previous work includes A Long Way To Go: A Pictorial and Literary Collage of 19th Century Women, English Portraits, and The English Family Portrait.