WILLIAM WETMORE STORY and His Friends From Letters, Diaries, and Recollections

(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1903).

FIRST EDITION RARELY FOUND IN SUCH FINE CONDITION. Henry James's fine work on William Story, the great American sculptor, art critic, poet and editor. He was son of Joseph Story, the famed jurist, and was himself a graduate of Harvard Law School where he had excelled. James's work is biographical in nature, and considers Story's life from the early years in Boston and Cambridge to his years in Rome where he had lived from 1850. James highlights the Palazzo Barberini, Story's apartment in Rome which became a central location for Americans in Rome. Story counted among his friends the Brownings and Walter Savage Landor among others. Chapters include what James called Story's middle years in Rome, the importance of Siena, his famous sculptures of Cleopatra and the Libyan Sibyl and England and its society. The later Roman years were rich with American commissions and celebratory events.
William Wetmore Story is famous for the bust of his father, now at Harvard University, his Medea at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, his other life-size statues of Saul, Sappho, Electra, Solomon, Orestes and Shakespeare among others.
Henry James concentrated especially on the "friends" of the title which included the Brownings, Landor, James Russell Lowell and other figures even more prominent than Story himself. The biography is especially a reminiscence on Italy and the notables that Story had made such an important part of his life. There are many quotes from the fine letters written to Story by his friends. And he wrote sympathetically of the old Roman, American-Roman, Hawthornesque and other bygone days. Wiki. Item #31969

2 volumes. First Edition, American Imprint using the original English sheets. With fine frontispieces in photogravure in each volume. 8vo, publisher's original dark-green cloth, the spines lettered and ruled in gilt, the upper covers ruled in gilt at the head, top edges gilt. [vi], 371; [vi], 345 pp. A fine set in exemplary condition, clean and bright both inside and out.

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Price: $250.00