When a beautiful, spoilt, aristocratic woman with revolutionary ambitions meets an idealistic young proletarian conspirator who dreams of a better life, the stage is set for The Princess Casamassima in which Henry James explores the London underworld and the political unrest seething there in the later nineteenth century. In the end, Christina Light’s waywardness proves fatal for the fancifully named Hyacinth Robinson, but not before the typically Jamesian encounter of instinct and intelligence has been explored in all its tragi-comic potential.
