A COLLEGE MYSTERY: THE STORY OF THE APPARITION IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN AT CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., 1918. Octavo, pp. [i-iv] v [vi] vii [viii] ix [x-xi] xii [1] 2-76, six inserted plates, five with drawings by F. H. Round, original blue cloth, front panel stamped in gold and ruled in blind, spine panel stamped in gold, bottom edge untrimmed. First edition. An antiquarian ghost story "in the form of a series of documents purporting to tell the story behind an apparition seen in Christ Church, Cambridge. A sideline from the tradition of such writers as M. R. James, A. C. Benson and Arthur Gray -- a moral fantasy which makes its point very neatly." - Barron (ed), Horror Literature 3-10. "The essence of an academic/antiquarian ghost story is that careful analysis is brought into contact with the unanalyzable, and that this in itself is (for an academic) a kind of tragedy. No matter how far the analysis can be carried -- and in examples like Baker's A COLLEGE MYSTERY it is very detailed indeed -- the end result is no more (and, significantly, no less) than a more intricate account of an intractable mystery." - Stableford, in Barron (ed.), Horror Literature (1991), p. 98. This short novel, quite in the Jamesian tradition, does not appear in the well known "James gang" list by Rosemary Pardoe. Reginald 00732. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978). The publisher's file copy with the copyright receipts tipped onto the rear paste-down and the complete history of the first and second printings typewritten on the recto and verso of two leaves laid in. A fine copy. An uncommon book. Accompanied by a 1920 printing of "A Guide Map of the Borough of Cambridge" published by Heffer. (#170795).
Price: $750.00
No statement of printing.