The Tragic Muse

London: Macmillan, 1890. First English edition of Henry James’s The Tragic Muse, one of only 500 copies, issued the same month as the first American edition. Originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, The Tragic Muse was the last novel that James completed before his mid-career turn to writing for the stage, a failed experiment that would throw into relief the distinction between literature and the other arts at the center of this novel. The Tragic Muse follows the young painter Nick Dormer and the rising actress Miriam Rooth, whose artistic ambitions put them at odds with their friends and admirers. As Miriam observes to the diplomat whose patronage helped make her career, when he presses her to leave the stage and become an ambassador’s wife: “If I’m so fine I’m worth looking after a bit, and the place where I’m finest is the place to look after me! . . . It was the theatre that brought you here.” Edel & Laurence A34b. A very nearly fine copy. Three octavo volumes, measuring 7.25 x 4.5 inches: [4], 248; [4], 252; [4], 258. Original royal blue textured cloth lettered in gilt to upper boards and spines, spines lettered in gilt with gilt publisher’s device and decorative gilt rules at head and foot, black-coated endpapers. Several pencil notes to endpapers, spines very slightly cocked. Housed in a custom clamshell box. (Inventory #: 1003901)