An American meets a young woman on a train from Denver, follows her to a principality in the Balkans he has never heard of, and finds her rank makes marrying her a state matter. McCutcheon invented Graustark in 1901 and with it the whole American vogue for imaginary-kingdom romance — six sequels, several films, and a word that entered the language for any operetta monarchy. Sixty plates from 1823 to 1924, among them Childe Hassam and John Sloan, capture the American and European interiors, streets, and twilight scenes that surround this tale of an invented kingdom.
