Victorian Outsider: A Biography of J. A. M. Whistler

New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1973. Cloth, 307 pages, illustrations; 25 cm. Tight, clean copy. Age toning. Stated First Edition. Price-clipped dust jacket, with light edgewear, protected in a mylar cover. "The legend of James Whistler is that of both a brilliantly eccentric butterfly whose wit pulverized every philistine within range and a painter whose stance and work were examples of sophistication and modernism triumphing over the dullards of his time. Yet even without the legend Whistler's life was a remarkable one. Using Whistler's own letters and other primary sources, Roy McMullen brings to life Whistler's years as a Bohemian on the Paris Left Bank, his affairs with his Irish and English mistresses, his encounters with men like Carlyle, Ruskin, Beardsley and Wilde, his immediate and violent passions for oriental art, for travel to mysterious places, his marriage at the age of fifty-four, the growth of his international reputation and the sad last years as a sardonic, eccentric celebrity and lonely widower." -- Publisher. CONTENTS: Railroads and the Bible, 1834-1843; Palaces and the academies, 1843-1849; The southern cavalier, 1849-1855; The bohemian dandy, 1855-1859; Ancients and moderns, 1855-1859; Music, water, and hair, 1859-1860; On the road, 1860-1863; Chelsea and the orient, 1863-1865; The Valparaiso crisis, 1865-1871; Precarious balance, 1871-1876; The peacock crisis, 1876-1877; The debacle, 1877-1879; Venetian interlude, 1879-1881; Unfulfilled promise, 1881-1885; Preaching and dictating, 1885-1888; Period figure, 1888-1896; Last years, 1896-1903.. 1st. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo.