Watch and Ward is James' first novel. Serialised in 1871 and published in book form in 1878, it marks an important stage in James's novelistic development. This first-ever scholarly edition provides extensive annotations, a detailed textual history, and a full introduction exploring the novel's literary, cultural and historical contexts.

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. While Watch and Ward has long been dismissed as an early apprentice work, it marks an important stage in James's development as a fiction writer, building upon the stories he wrote during the late 1860s and pointing, at the same time, to the works he would write during the ensuing decade and which would secure his reputation, including 'Daisy Miller', The American and The Portrait of a Lady. Extensive explanatory notes enable modern readers to understand the novel's historical, cultural and literary references.