THE MORTGAGE ON THE BRAIN: BEING THE CONFESSIONS OF THE LATE ETHELBERT CROFT, M.D. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1905. Octavo, pp. [1-14] [1-2] 3-293 [294: blank] [note: first leaf is a blank], four inserted plates with illustrations by Charles Raymond Macauley, original decorated brown cloth, front panel stamped in gold and white, spine panel stamped in white, pictorial paper onlay with illustration by Blendon Campbell affixed to front panel. First edition. This novel "describes an electric-shock treatment which alters personality beneficially and undermines many then-conventional views of the nature of the mind. The story is a melodramatic hotchpotch, but is of interest in its reference to the ego, which is described (as in the title) as holding no more than a mortgage on its habitat: this idea has found sophisticated support in late-20th-century studies of the workings of the mind." - Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), p. 544. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 2-90; (1981) 1-93; and (2004) II-496. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 1045. Clareson, The Emergence of American Science Fiction: 1880-1915, pp. 99-102. Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 399. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 105. Survey of Science Fiction Literature III, pp. 1459-62. Bleiler (1978), p. 94. Reginald 06791. Smith, American Fiction, 1901-1925 H-232. Edges of text paper just a bit darkened, several light vertical creases to rear free endpaper, a near fine copy. (#130729).
Price: $100.00
"Published, April, 1905" on copyright page.