JAMES, HENRY.

Notes of a Son & Brother.

London Macmillan and Co. 1914 First and only English editition. One of 1250 copies. A presentation copy to Jocelyn Persse, inscribed by the author in a bold hand: "To Jocelyn Persse his affectionate old friend Henry James March 1914." (The book was issued in the same month.) With a frontispiece self-portrait of the philosopher William James, the author's brother. Issued only two years prior to James's death, and one year after he renounced his American citizenship to become a British citizen, "Notes" is considered a companion volume to his two other autobiographies, A Small Boy and Others and The Middle Years. According to Edel and Laurence, one source shows the publication of the American edition of Notes as coming seven months after the British edition, while others indicate that the American version was issued more or less concurrently with the British. Regardless, James was for all intents and purposes an English writer at that point, and the case may be made that the English edition should take priority over the American. The inscription to Persse is most significant. James met Persse in 1903, and immediately struck up a friendship with him. According to James biographer Laurence Edel, it was a relationship that would "grow in warmth and feeling and remain devoted and loyal to the end -- into the time when James grew old and ill and Jocelyn's golden hair turned white. . . ." He suggests that Prince Amerigo in James's The Golden Bowl may even bear a resemblance to Persse. This copy is bound in the original blue cloth, lettered in gilt on the spine. Housed in a blue cloth box with a red label to the spine. A very fine copy with only a bit of toning to the spine and very slight bumping at the head and foot of the spine. (Edel, Henry James: A Life, pp. 184-185; Edel and Laurence A72b).

• USD 7,500.00 > otras divisas
• nº de pedido: 21978

• librero: Bromer Booksellers Inc. (USA)