Leaves for Italy in December for extended stay, mainly in Florence and Venice. Sees much of Constance Fenimore Woolson and stays in her villa. Writes “The Aspern Papers” and other tales. Returns to De Vere Gardens in July and begins work on The Tragic Muse. Pays several country visits. Dines out less often (“I know it all—all that one sees by ‘going out’—today, as if I had made it. But if I had, I would have made it better!”).

1888

The Reverberator, The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Modern Warning, and Partial Portraits published. Elizabeth Boott Duveneck dies. Robert Louis Stevenson leaves for the South Seas. Engages fencing teacher to combat “symptoms of a portentous corpulence.” Goes abroad in October to Geneva (where he visits Woolson), Genoa, Monte Carlo, and Paris.

1889–90

Catharine Walsh (Aunt Kate) dies in March 1889. William comes to England to visit Alice in August. James goes to Dover in September and then to Paris for five weeks. Writes account of Robert Browning’s funeral in Westminster Abbey. Dramatizes The American for the Compton Comedy Company. Meets and becomes close friends with American journalist William Morton Fullerton and young American publisher Wolcott Balestier. Goes to Italy for the summer, staying in Venice and Florence, and takes a brief walking tour in Tuscany with W. W. Baldwin, an American physician practicing in Florence. Woolson moves to Cheltenham, England, to be near James. Atlantic Monthly rejects his story “The Pupil,” but it appears in England in April 1891. Writes series of drawing-room comedies for theater. Meets Rudyard Kipling. The Tragic Muse serialized in Atlantic Monthly (Jan. 1889–May 1890; published 1890). A London Life (including “The Patagonia,” “The Liar,” “Mrs. Temperly”) published in 1889.

1891

The American produced at Southport is a success during road tour. After residence in Leamington, Alice returns to London, cared for by Katharine Loring. Doctors discover she has breast cancer. James circulates comedies (Mrs. Vibert, later called Tenants, and Mrs. Jasper, later named Disengaged) among theater managers who are cool to his work. Unimpressed at first by Ibsen, writes an appreciative review after seeing a performance of Hedda Gabler with Elizabeth Robins, a young Kentucky actress; persuades her to take the part of Mme. de Cintré in the London production of The American. Recuperates from flu in Ireland. James Russell Lowell dies. The American opens in London, September 26, and runs for seventy nights. Wolcott Balestier dies, and James attends his funeral in Dresden in December.

1892

Alice James dies on March 6. James travels to Siena to be near the Paul Bourgets, and Venice (June–July) to visit the Daniel Curtises, then to Lausanne to meet William and his family, who have come abroad for his sabbatical. Attends funeral of Tennyson at Westminster Abbey. Augustin Daly agrees to produce Mrs. Jasper. The American continues to be performed on the road by Edward Compton. The Lesson of the Master (with a collection of stories including “The Marriages,” “The Pupil,” “Brooksmith,” “The Solution,” and “Sir Edmund Orme”) published.

1893