Henry James, The Tragic Muse

Mhairi Catriona Pooler (University of Aberdeen)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Patrick Chura (University of Akron), J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication Jun 1890

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The Tragic Muse is Henry James’s novel about the “artist-life” (Tragic Muse, 1). First conceived as a short novel about “the histrionic character” (Perosa, 38) a year after the publication of the two big novels of James’s so-called “middle period” – The Bostonians (1886) and The Princess Casamassima (1886) – The Tragic Muse actually appeared as seventeen instalments in the Atlantic Monthly magazine between January 1889 and May 1890. What Dorothea Krook calls “perhaps the most distinguished novel” of this period of James’s career (62) was published at a loss in book form in Britain, by Macmillan, and in America by Houghton, Mifflin Co. in June 1890. Unlike The Bostonians, however, James considered The Tragic Muse worth revising almost two decades later for volume VII of his New York Edition.

The preface to the New...

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2836 words

Citation: Pooler, Mhairi Catriona. "The Tragic Muse". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 March 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7965, accessed 09 June 2026.]

Henry James, The Tragic Muse

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

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