IN DEACON'S ORDERS, ETC. London: Chatto & Windus, 1895. Octavo, pp. [i-v] vi [vii-viii] [1] 2-312 + 32-page publisher's catalogue dated "Sept. 1894" inserted at rear, inserted frontispiece with illustration by A. Forestier, original decorated maroon cloth. front panel stamped in black, spine panel stamped in gold, all edges untrimmed, floral patterned endpapers. First edition. Eleven short stories, the title story, which concerns religious hypocrisy, being of novelette length. "... Besant was ranked by contemporaries with the best English novelists. In 1893, when he and William Black and Thomas Hardy wrote a joint letter defending American publishers against the charges of piracy before the passage of the new international copyright law, Kipling protested in a ballad calling them 'the three great captains'" (Wolff, vol. I, p. 75). Besant was the driving force behind the creation in the 1880s of the Society of Authors, which strove to protect the legal rights and interests of writers. Hubin (1994), p. 69. Wolff 450. Not in Sadleir. Partial hairline crack to inner front hinge, but a tight, bright, very good copy. Scarce. (#113417).
Price: $150.00
No statement of printing.