THE MASKED PROPHET: A PSYCHOLOGICAL ROMANCE ... Second Edition. New York: The Alliance Publishing Company, 1900. Octavo, pp. [1-5] 6-190, flyleaf at front, inserted frontispiece and two vignettes (by Dan Beard) in text, original green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold. Second edition. An eccentric occult romance, first published in 1895, expanded from the author's short story, "A Romance of an Hour," published in COSMOPOLITAN in 1891. "Complex occult novel ... including an account of a spirit journey to a huge multi-planeted system far off in interstellar space. The early part of the story, preceding the cosmic excursion gives an impressively imagined account of the contents and inhabitants of the protagonist's brain and body." - Locke, Voyages in Space (2011) V139. "Naive, unliterary, but sometimes quite interesting in idea. The events and the system described are far more elaborate than [my] resume indicates." - Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 251. The first edition, published by Caxton Company in 1895, is rare: Wright locates only one copy (DLC). Both the Charvat collection at OSU and the Eaton collection at Riverside have only this second edition, which itself is rather uncommon. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 249 (synopsis of "A Romance of an Hour," the earlier short version of the story). Bleiler (1978), p. 28. Reginald 01717. Wright (III) 621. Some rubbing to cloth, a very good copy. (#165138).
Price: $450.00
"Second edition" on title page.