THE NOTARY'S NOSE. Translated from the French ... by Henry Holt. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1874. Octavo, pp. [1-8] [1] 2-240, fly leaves at front and rear, original decorated tan cloth, front, spine and rear panels stamped in black, publisher's ads printed in red on endpapers. First U.S. edition of this translation. "The Notary's Nose" was published earlier in the U.S. as THE NOSE OF A NOTARY (Boston: Loring, 1863). This Holt edition includes a short story, "Uncle and Nephew." Part of Holt's "Leisure Hour Series." A short and somewhat humorous science-fiction novel about the consequences of a medical operation in which a man who has lost his nose in a duel has a new one fashioned out of the flesh of another man's arm. The nose retains an occult connection with its former owner, and complications ensue. A variation on the idea that transplants of tissue and organs would also, in effect, transplant personality (a trope that goes back to FRANKENSTEIN). Leypoldt and Holt had earlier published About's THE MAN WITH THE BROKEN EAR, the second of three short science-fiction novels written by About. Reginald 00014A. Versins, Encyclopédie de l'Utopie, des Voyages Extraordinaires et de Science Fiction, p. 12. Slight spine lean, some age-darkening and light soiling to cloth, a good, sound copy. (#118264).
Price: $75.00
No statement of printing.