Written at the end of the 1890s, when issues such as female emancipation and the double standard were in fierce debate, James's novel enacts the tension between various views of women and also of a aristocracy that was fading. The novel traces the experiences of 18-year-old Nanda Brookenham, who is exposed to corruption in the salon of her youthful modern mother and the shockingly sophisticated talk of the circle she maintains. Here, the theme of virginal innocence and its importance in the marriage-market is handled in terms of a well-bred urbanity which somehow fails to suppress a lurking sense of violence. The Awkward Age anticipates the experimental fiction of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Unlike most other existing texts, which are based on the earlier serial version of the novel, this is the first edition as published in book form in 1899.