The Princess Casamassima is the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in radical politics and a terrorist assassination plot. The book is a singular entity of the Jamesian canon due to the treatment of violent political themes and its depiction of lower class London life. The novel is also unique among James's fiction in having a major character, Christina Light, that appeared in an earlier work: Roderick Hudson.