not here to be retraced

critics, from Edel onwards, have suggested that James’s main inspiration for the ‘single character’ of Isabel Archer was his cousin Minny Temple (1845-1870) who died of tuberculosis before she had ‘really lived’; he may also have incorporated other young American girls he had known, such as Clover Hooper; so his reasons for not retracing the acquisition of his single character may be very personal