The Princess Casamassima: A Novel.

JAMES, Henry.

$1,250.00

Item Number: 143493

New York: Macmillan and Co, 1886.

First American edition of one of James’s “three formidable novels” published in the 1880s along with The Bostonians and The Tragic Muse. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth. In near fine condition, name opposite the half-title page. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell case.

"The Princess Casamassima, a panoramic novel with a vivid English setting, documents a sensitive bookbinder's attempt to come to terms with his illegitimate birth and social disadvantages through involvement in subversive political action. Even more naturalistic than its predecessor [The Bostonians], The Princess reads today like an elegy for the beauty and traditions painfully evolved by civilized society and now endangered by what Yeats called 'mere anarchy'" (Gargano, 122).