James Selwin Tait

James Selwin Tait was a 19th-century author whose surviving books show a remarkably wide range. He is best known today for My Friend Pasquale, and Other Stories (1892), a collection published in New York, and records from Project Gutenberg and library catalogs also connect him with earlier and later nonfiction works.

His bibliography suggests a writer who was comfortable in several worlds at once. In addition to fiction, he wrote on financial and economic questions, including National Banks and Government Circulation (1888) and Our Financial Upheavals, Their Cause and Cure (1907). Library records also list Emigration by Colony for the Middle Classes, pointing to an interest in social policy as well as storytelling.

An even earlier book, Border Memories (1876), shows his involvement in historical and biographical writing. Taken together, these works paint a picture of an energetic, versatile author whose career crossed literature, history, and public debate.