Henry James was fascinated by clothing and dress. This book examines, for the first time, the role of dress in reinforcing thematic and symbolic patterns in James''s fictional world. Hughes traces a development from the significance of dress in discussion of ''the American Girl'' in the early works, through dress as an indicator of social position, to the emergence of the more unstable and threatening aspects of dress, which culminate in the strange case of the coat of changing colours in The Sense of the Past.

Henry James was fascinated by clothing and dress. This book examines, for the first time, the role of dress in reinforcing thematic and symbolic patterns in James''s fictional world. Hughes traces a development from the significance of dress in discussion of ''the American Girl'' in the early works, through dress as an indicator of social position, to the emergence of the more unstable and threatening aspects of dress, which culminate in the strange case of the coat of changing colours in The Sense of the Past.