Mapped
The Bostonians
Henry James
A novel of reform-era Boston, mapped to real ground. Olive Chancellor's house stands on the water side of Charles Street, on the flat of Beacon Hill, looking over the new-made Back Bay; the reformer Miss Birdseye holds her meeting out in the South End; Verena crosses to Cambridge and the great Memorial Hall at Harvard; and the climax comes at the Music Hall, the concert hall where she is to give her big address. Summer takes them to "Marmion" on the southern cape, James's name for the real village of Marion, Massachusetts. A run of scenes moves the fight to New York.
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The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James
The spirited young American Isabel Archer, come into a fortune, prizes her freedom above all and chooses, of all her suitors, the one who will cage her, the cold aesthete Gilbert Osmond. James follows her across a real transatlantic world: the Touchetts' English house on the Thames, London, the Florence where Osmond weaves his trap, and the Rome where the marriage closes around her like a beautiful prison.
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Washington Square
Henry James
A single square, mapped to the door. James fixes the whole novel to a few blocks of Greenwich Village: Dr Sloper's wide-fronted house on Washington Square North, the real Row of Greek Revival houses that still stands; the Square itself, with its wooden paling and ailantus-trees; and the confident new Fifth Avenue taking its origin at the corner. Downtown, near the City Hall, is the old world the doctor left; uptown is the raw frontier fashion was chasing. A tour of Switzerland is the one excursion beyond the setting.
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