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This 1916 collection of ten short stories based on the works of ten imaginary poets of different epochs contains "Balthazar's Daughter," which Cabell later turned into his only published play, The Jewel Merchants.  The collection also features two poems and a lengthy introduction. 

A must-read for travelers, Anglophiles, and fans of Henry James. These engaging essays capture the wonder and pleasure of James’s first experiences in England, the country that later became his adopted home for half a century. Lively vignettes take the reader from the city to the country to the seaside, each one brimming with James’s insights and sparkling prose.

First published in 1884, and revised substantially in 1900, A Little Tour in France recounts James's six-week tour of provincial France—as he notes "France may be Paris, but Paris is not France." Urbane, witty, knowledgeable, James is a charming tour guide as he leads readers from Touraine to Provence, and thence north again to Burgundy.

Confidence, one of Henry James’s early and lesser-known novels, is the charming story of a pair of American expatriates—an artist and a scientist—traveling through the great cities of Europe. Romantic complications ensue when the two old friends encounter two very different women on their travels, proposals and rejections follow, but all ends happily for everyone.

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. "The American" is Henry James novel about American businessman and civil war veteran Christopher Newman, a man who has found early fortune in business and having retired decides to take a tour of Europe. There he meets...

Hyacinth Robinson is an orphan raised by a spinster dressmaker. As a young man, he gets caught up in radical politics and a terrorist plot. He inadvertently meets the title character, who is a revolutionary herself, and who introduces Hyacinth to a world of refinement and privilege. Eventually, he begins...

Among the chapters in this 1897 collection are "First, the Critics, and then a Word on Dickens," "Robert Louis Stevenson," "Living Masters—Rudyard Kipling," "Dr. Macdonald and Mr. J. M. Barrie," and "The Americans." Murray feared he would be ridiculed for the book, but instead gained literary friends (and praise) as a result of its publication.

This extraordinary fragment, left incomplete at the author's death, hints at the direction Hawthorne's genius may have taken had he lived.  Ironically, the subject is the search—through science rather than magic—for an "elixir of life."  Poignantly, the unfinished manuscript lay upon Hawthorne's coffin during the author's funeral services.

Published in 1905, this biography of Lowell relies mainly on his correspondence, giving the book a lively, quasi-autobiographical result.  A contemporary review in the New York Times pronounced the work "conspicuously free from provincialism of standards and of feeling, conspicuously competent, dispassionate, and therefore authoritative."

Eugene Field was an American writer best known for his children’s poetry—including the famous “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod”—as well as his for his humorous essays. This heartfelt collection of reminiscences of his friend by the actor Francis Wilson captures Field’s kind and witty personality and brings his legendary pranks to life.

Underwood was a personal friend of the great American poet and abolitionist James Russell Lowell. Here, the author records his reminiscences of their friendship as well as critical appraisals of his work—a simple yet rich portrait of the great poet.

American innocence and European sophistication provide the backdrop for this story of adultery, jealousy, and possession. A young heiress is engaged to be married, as is her widowed father. But both father and daughter are unaware that their respective betrotheds share a secret—one for which everyone involved must pay the price.

This 1896 novel, first published serially in the Illustrated London News, is a murder mystery with a twist—the callous crime goes unpunished, though not undiscovered.  James is less interested in a game of cat-and-mouse than in exploring the psychological motivations of his characters.

Though best known as a novelist, James also wrote non-fiction, including this controversial 1907 account of his 1905-06 American tour.  By 1905 he had lived in England for twenty-five years, and it is as a returning expatriate that James views the country of his birth—and finds much to criticize in its embrace of crass materialism.