Watch and Ward

Watch and Ward is a short novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1871 and later as a book in 1878. This was James' first attempt at a novel, though he virtually disowned the book later in life. James was still in his apprentice stage as a writer, and Watch and Ward shows predictable immaturity. It's an odd, sometimes melodramatic tale of how protagonist Roger Lawrence adopts an orphaned twelve-year-old girl, Nora Lambert, and raises her as his eventual bride-to-be. But complications ensue, sometimes in a bizarre manner. James later called Roderick Hudson (1875) his first novel instead of Watch and Ward.

Read more about Watch And Ward:  Plot Summary, Key Themes, Critical Evaluation

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    “Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
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    “Mister Ward, don’t yur blud bile at the thawt that three million and a half of your culled brethren air a clanking their chains in the South?—Sez I, not a bile! Let ‘em clank!”
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