James, Henry | The Portrait of a Lady, the author's enduring and best-loved tale

Property from an Important American Collection

James, Henry

The Portrait of a Lady. London: Macmillan and Co., 1881

3 volumes, 8vo. Half-titles, 24pp. of publisher's advertisements dated April 1881 at end of volume III. Publisher's dark blue cloth, spines gilt; upper joint of volume II a little frayed. Collector's morocco slipcase, folding chemises.

First edition of James's most popular and enduring novel.

"Trying to recover here, for recognition, the germ of my idea, I see that it must have consisted not at all in any conceit of a 'plot'... but altogether in the sense of a single character, the character and aspect of a particular engaging young woman, to which all the usual elements of a 'subject', certainly of a setting, were to need to be super added" (James, Preface to the New York edition of the novel, 1907).

Henry James's novel follows the character of Isabel Archer from New York to England and Rome as she maneuvers amorous advances and the burden of sudden wealth. James regularly sought the complexities of the Anglo-American dynamic and interplay as material for his writing, reflecting his identity as an American citizen that spent a vast portion of his life in Europe (eventually becoming a British citizen in 1915).

Having first appeared serially in Macmillan's Magazine and Atlantic Monthly from October 1880, The Portrait of a Lady in book form followed in November 1881. The first impression of 750 copies was issued in two variant colors of cloth (no precedence has been established between the two). Most copies were issued with advertisements dated December 1881 but some have this earlier set, "probably inserted through error or through shortage at the bindery of the more contemporary catalogue" (Edel and Laurence).  

An exquisite copy of a notoriously scarce book.

REFERENCES:

Sadleir 1281, Edel and Laurence A16(a); Connolly, The Modern Movement 1

PROVENANCE:

Louise Stewart Bradshaw (ownership inscription)