Henry James’s early novel, _The Bostonians_, published in 1885, stands in sharp contrast. This story ran as a serial in _Century Magazine_. Before it was finished Richard Watson Gilder, the editor, wrote James that “he had never published anything so unpopular.” The novel came out as a book a year later but met with no warmer reception, and was not subsequently reissued until 1945, being omitted even from the twenty-nine volume Scribner edition of James’ _Novels and Tales_ in 1923. Philip Rahv in the preface of the 1945 edition of _The Bostonians_ indicates several reasons for its unpopularity, but says that undoubtedly the “most disquieting” was its keen analysis of “the emotional economy of the Lesbian woman.”[17] Because of James’s subtlety his work suffers more than most from condensation, but as the text of the novel is now readily available, its nearly four hundred pages can be reduced here to the barest skeleton. In essence, the plot is the eternal triangle. At its apex is Verena Tarrant, ultra-feminine, passive and suggestible, whose antecedents bear witness to James’s interest in recently published theories of heredity. The rivals for possession of her are Olive Chancellor, Boston intellectual and feminist spinster a decade her senior, and the latter’s cousin from Mississippi, a young man who has come out of the Civil War on the losing side with something of the present day’s critical pessimism toward modern society. Olive sees in the girl, who has inherited a spell-binding oratorical gift, a powerful potential ally for the Woman’s Movement to which she herself is devoted. Subconsciously, however, her motivation is a love-at-first-sight quite as passionate as that of her male cousin. Olive manages virtually to adopt Verena and by degrees to estrange her from her family and her previous suitors. Olive’s cousin, Basil Ransom, is not so easily disposed of, so she must finally resort to exacting a promise from the girl that she will not marry. For several years the two women are wholly absorbed in their feminist efforts, traveling in Europe where they meet the prominent leaders of the movement, and studying intensively. Olive’s emphasis is always upon the wrongs women have suffered at the hands of men.