Books

London: Macmillan, 1886. First edition of Henry James’s most overtly political novel, one of 750 copies, first published in the Atlantic Monthly. The Princess Casamassima traces the friendship of a radical London bookbinder and an idle princess with revolutionary sympathies: “By way of defending the aristocracy he said to her that it couldn't be true they were all a bad lot (he used that expression because she had let him know that she liked him to speak in the manner of the people).” The comparatively action-packed plot, which turns on a terrorist assassination attempt, shows the influence of Charles Dickens and Émile Zola on James more clearly than his introspective fiction. Edel & Laurence A29. A near-fine first edition of a major novel. Three octavo volumes, measuring 7.5 x 5 inches: iv, 252; iv, 257, [3]; iv, 242, [2]. Original dark blue-green cloth, double-rule border and panel stamped in black and blind, spines lettered in gilt with gilt publisher’s device and…

The Princess Casamassima is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1885-1886 and then as a book in 1886. The novel is a story about London bookbinder Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in radical politics and a terrorist assassination plot. The book combines themes of political activism and social reform with James's characteristic psychological insight.