James Selwin Tait

James Selwin Tait (1846–1917) was an American writer whose work ranged across fiction and economics. Public catalog records and digital library listings connect him with titles such as My Friend Pasquale, and Other Stories, National Banks and Government Circulation Retrospective and Prospective (1888), and Our Financial Upheavals, Their Cause and Cure (1907).

That mix makes him an interesting figure for modern readers: he appears to have written both imaginative stories and arguments about money, banking, and reform. My Friend Pasquale is the best-known of his literary works in digital archives, while library records preserve his nonfiction writing on finance.

Reliable biographical detail beyond his birth and death years is scarce in the sources I found, so much of his life remains obscure. Even so, the books that survive show a versatile author whose writing moved between narrative storytelling and the big economic questions of his day.