My copy of this is falling to bits down the spine and has certainly seen better days, but by golly is it a beautiful book. Not only is James as wonderful a historian as he is a ghost story writer (pretty obvious already from all this historical flourishes James uses so brilliantly to establish a sense of realism in his stories) but the whole book is beautiful artefact. I think it a great shame this side of James' writing is lesser known because it's fairly obvious that they are deeply integral to why he was such an extraordinary writer. ( )