DONOVAN PASHA AND SOME PEOPLE OF EGYPT. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1902. Octavo, original decorated blue cloth. First U.S. edition. Sir Gilbert Parker, Bart. (1862-1932) was a Canadian author of popular fiction, "an imperialist of the old romantic school" according to THE NATION. "His books are 'dated,' as much from their old-fashioned jingoism as from their 'healthy tone' and saccharine complacency. However, he was a real storyteller, and he had a student's respect for history which made his work on the past of Canada, both fictional and nonfictional, accurate in detail and true to recorded fact," - Kunitz and Haycraft, Twentieth Century Authors, p. 1075-1076. Fifteen stories set in Egypt with a three-page foreword by the author. In the 1880s Parker traveled around the world, including Australia (where he spent four years as associate editor of the Sydney MORNING HERALD) and Europe (while in London he determined on a literary career). "He returned to Canada, where he began writing short stories about the French Canadian woodsmen among whom he had lived as a boy" (Kunitz and Haycraft). In DONOVAN PASHA, a collection of fifteen short stories, "Parker turned his attention from Canada and Australia to a more contentious frontier: Egypt. Donovan Pasha and Fielding Bey bear the white man's administrative burden. The stories are, virtually without exception, secondhand Kipling. 'A weird picture of change moving across the face of the unchangeable,' the DAILY CHRONICLE commented." - Kemp, Mitchell and Trotter, Edwardian Fiction, p. 307. Cloth rubbed at spine ends and corner tips, hairline cracks along inner hinges, still a sound, good copy. (#115658).
Price: $25.00
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