MASOLLAM; A PROBLEM OF THE PERIOD. A NOVEL. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1886. Octavo, three volumes: pp. [i-v] vi [vii-viii] [1] 2-278; [i-v] vi [vii-viii] [1] 2-284; [i-v] vi [vii-viii] [1] 2-262] [263-264: ads] + 24-page undated publisher's catalogue inserted at rear, original decorated smooth blue-gray cloth, front panels stamped in brown and green, spine panels stamped in brown, green and gold, top edge untrimmed, volume one has light brown coated endpapers with peacock feather design, volumes two and three have plain maroon coated endpapers. First edition. The British eccentric's most autobiographical fictional work, a sensation novel of political intrigues within an international order of occultists dedicated to socio-economic reforms. A roman a clef based on Oliphant's turbulent relations with American mystic Thomas Lake Harris and his utopian movement in upstate New York, a locale fermenting in the mid-nineteenth century with utopian and occult stirrings. "Oliphant, his mother and his fiancee all came under the sway of the charismatic (as well as sadistic and possibly mesmeric) Harris. Financial and sexual shenanigans -- colored with esoteric ideology -- ensued. Harris, the original of the Armenian eponym/hero of this novel, authored the influential treatise, ARCANA OF CHRISTIANITY (1858), whose interplanetary settings probably influenced (directly or indirectly) some of the interplanetary occult romances that appeared later in the century. Oliphant was a typical Victorian in many ways: expansive and eccentric, well-traveled, a man of letters and of action, his life encompassing much that was foolish as well as much that was fruitful." - Robert Eldridge. "How are we to regard this turgid, prolix, and almost lunatic novel? ... [It] is not truly fiction but a kind of personal history. The people, events, ideas, delusions are all real. The lunacy, if such we think it, was Oliphant's own." - Wolff, Strange Stories, p. 100. Margaret Oliphant, the Scottish author of much supernatural fiction, was his cousin. Sadleir 1842. Wolff 5211. NCBEL III 954. Traces of former circulating library labels on front covers of all three volumes, some soiling and staining to cloth, shelf wear at spine ends and corner tips, volume one has a shelf lean, cracked inner hinges, and a shallow chip from upper spine end, but is in sound, about good condition; volumes two and three are in good to very good condition. Perhaps a married set. A very scarce book seldom found in decent condition. (#130671).
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