Hyacinth Robinson, a young man and a skilled bookbinder, meets revolutionary Paul Muniment and gets involved in radical politics. One night in the theatre Hyacinth meets the radiantly beautiful Princess Casamassima, who has become a revolutionary herself and lives apart from her dull husband. Meanwhile, Hyacinth has committed himself to carrying out a terrorist assassination, though the exact time and place have not yet been specified to him, and soon hi finds himself between the love and the ideology.

Henry James (1843-1916) was an American-British writer who spent most of his writing career in Britain. James is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He is best known for a number of novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, English people, and continental Europeans – examples of such novels include The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, and The Wings of the Dove.