List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations, General editors' preface; General chronology of James' life and writings; Introduction; Textual introduction; Chronology of composition and production; Bibliography; The Ambassadors; Glossary of foreign words and phrases; Notes; Textual variants; Emendations; Appendices.

"The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. One of Henry James' last three great novels, The Ambassadors offers a witty, observant and profound exploration of the contrast between American and European cultures and of the desire to 'live all you can'. It follows the journey of self-discovery taken by a middle-aged literary gentleman, Lambert Strether, as he sheds his New England perspective and comes to appreciate cosmopolitan society and values, although not without personal cost. This edition, based on the work's first book appearance in 1903, illuminates its literary and cultural contexts, contains comprehensive annotation, and provides a detailed textual history. It will appeal to James scholars, book historians and students of early twentieth-century Anglo-American literature and culture, and re-introduce readers to this masterpiece"-- Provided by publisher.

"This book aims to represent James's fictional career as it evolves, with a fresh and expanded sense of its changing contexts and an informed sense of his developing style, technique and concerns. Consequently it does not attempt to base its choices on the principle of the 'last lifetime edition', which in the case of Henry James is monumentally embodied in the twenty-four volumes of the NYE, the author's selection of nine longer novels (six of them in two volumes) and fifty-eight shorter novels and tales, and including eighteen specially composed Prefaces. The CFHJ, as a general rule, adopts rather the text of the first published book edition of a work, unless the intrinsic particularities and the publishing history of that work require an alternative choice, on the ground that emphasis on the first context in which it was written and read will permit an unprecedented fullness of attention to the transformations in James's writing over five decades, as well as the rich literary and social contexts of their original publication"-- Provided by publisher.