FACTS AND FICTION: TALES OF THE SEA AND SECOND SIGHT, AND REMINISCENCES OF AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, AND A VOYAGE TO SAN FRANCISCO. By E. M. Pontefract: Printed by R. Holmes, "Advertiser" Office, 1884. Octavo, pp. [1-6] [1-3] 4-134 [135: blank] [136: printer's imprint], original decorated red cloth, front panel stamped in red and black, rear panel stamped in blind, yellow coated endpapers. First edition. Presentation copy with signed inscription by Millais dated March 1884 on verso of front free endpaper. Includes two nautical weird tales: "How Ernest Adams Met his Wife," a disaster at sea is averted by supernatural intervention, and "The Captain of the Bella," a ghost story in which a spectre warns the captain that his ship is doomed to be wrecked and his crew killed in the Antarctic if the seaman does not heed his advice; the ship is destroyed and all hands lost; the second half of the book consists of three nonfiction sketches of life in Australia, New Zealand, and at sea. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978) or Reginald (1979; 1992). Not in Larnach or Blackford, et al. Several ink stains to cloth, recto of first leaf and verso of last leaf age-darkened (some interaction with free endpapers), several leaves printed out of proper sequence (probably common to the entire edition), but nothing is missing, a bright, very good copy. (#170897).
Price: $750.00
No statement of printing.