LYNCH, Lawrence [E. Murdoch van Deventer]. Against Odds. A detective story. London, Ward Lock [c1895]. Octavo green cloth blocked in black and gilt; frontispiece. Title browned but an excellent bright copy. Au$75
A re-issue in Ward Lock's uniform series of thrillers which could consist of the first edition, a reprint, or a re-issue of sheets with a new title page which, as this title page is on very different paper to the rest of the book, is the case here. The book first appeared in Chicago, then London, in 1894.
MACKAY, Kenneth. The Yellow Wave. A romance of the Asiatic invasion of Australia. London, Bentley 1895. Octavo publisher's cloth; folding map and six plates by Frank P. Mahony (two form a double page spread in two panels). Edges rubbed but a rather good copy. Au$1250
First edition, the same sheets were re-issued a couple of years later as an 'Australian Edition', either form is hard to find. This is by no means the first invasion of Australia novel - an earlier generation's fear of the Russians had produced at least two, and Robert Potter had, in The Germ Growers (1892), written what was possibly the first ever alien invasion novel - but it is early for the Yellow Peril.
The Japanese defeat of Russia a decade later sparked a number of invasion novels but the rabidity of the White Australia movement had produced little more than inflamatory articles and cartoons until this. The Russians are not forgotten - they figure at the centre - but it is the Mongol horde that will (the book is set sixty years into the future) sweep down through Queensland using the land grant railways. This is a long and complicated novel, as much a romance as political hobbyhorse.
Mackay was a politician who had published some outback fiction and horsey verse to a good reception - when was the last time you saw verse reviewed in newspapers' sporting pages as quoted at the end of the book? Here he happily mixes in society life, horse racing and a tragic love affair.
MACKAY, Kenneth. The Yellow Wave. A romance of the Asiatic invasion of Australia. London, Bentley 1895. Octavo contemporary half roan (a repair to the back hinge); folding map and six plates by Frank P. Mahony (two form one view in two panels). A few minor signs of use but a pretty good copy. Au$750
First edition, the same sheets were re-issued a couple of years later as an 'Australian Edition', either form is hard to find. This is by no means the first invasion of Australia novel - an earlier generation's fear of the Russians had produced at least two, and Robert Potter had, in The Germ Growers (1892), written what was possibly the first ever alien invasion novel - but it is early for the Yellow Peril.
The Japanese defeat of Russia a decade later sparked a number of invasion novels but the rabidity of the White Australia movement had produced little more than inflamatory articles and cartoons until this. The Russians are not forgotten - they figure at the centre - but it is the Mongol horde that will (the book is set sixty years into the future) sweep down through Queensland using the land grant railways. This is a long and complicated novel, as much a romance as political hobbyhorse.
Mackay was a politician who had published some outback fiction and horsey verse to a good reception (when was the last time you saw poetry reviewed in newspaper sporting pages? - quoted at the end of this book). Here he happily mixes in society life, horse racing and a tragic love affair.
PHILIPS, F.C A Question of Color. NY, Stokes 1895. Narrow octavo publisher's cloth; [4],148pp, frontispiece. The first in Stokes' Bijou Series. Au$75
First American edition, contemporaneous with the London edition. This begins as an unremarkable light romance of the period, until the question of colour intrudes: the young woman throws over her impecunious fiance to marry a rich African prince, brought up in England and 'University' educated. Towards the end we seem to be heading into a crime thriller and we finish with satisfying tragedy.
EASTWICK, Mrs. Egerton. The Rubies of Rajmar or, Mr. Charlecote's Daughters. A romance. London, Newnes 1895. Octavo publisher's illustrated green cloth (a touch dusty). A rather good copy. Eight page publisher's list at the end announcing this as just ready. Au$250
First edition of this jewel ridden thriller of murder and interracial marriage. The Guardian was kind: "There is plenty of sensation ... mysterious Indians and secret passages, and ... a murder, and altogether the authoress contrives to keep up a most praiseworthy atmosphere of creepiness throughout the book." The Athenaeum was more guarded: "not without interest, and the sense of mystery is fairly well sustained" - but not cruel. Unlike H.G. Wells in the Saturday Review: "Mrs. Eastwick imitating Wilkie Collins is quite unforgivable." The usually reliable Spectator shocked me, the staff must have been on a bender: "A story, indeed, that is readable from the first page to the last, disarms criticism".
BOURDILLON, Francis William. Nephele. NY, New Amsterdam 1896. Octavo publisher's decorated gilt cloth. A touch browned around the edges but a very good copy. Au$100
First American edition, contemporaneous with the English edition. Not quite a haunted violin thriller as suggested by the cover illustration but a haunted piece of music - and a violin does play a part.
HILLCOAT, Captain C.H. [Charles Henry]. Ida Hall or a Mystery of the Suez Canal. Glasgow, David Bryce [1896]. Narrow octavo publisher's red cloth (mild signs of use). A bit canted, pretty good. Au$300
Only edition of this uncommon thriller which sees our young Miss Ida Hall of Berkley Square [sic] snatched by slavers from a Port Said hotel. Despite the thousand pound reward posted nothing has been known of her until this account. Fear not, she will be alive and well at the end of the book despite her terrible sufferings. This wasn't Captain Hillcoat's most successful book, his Notes on Stowage went through at least three editions.
Now - at the risk of drawing too long a parochial bow - can we claim some place for this in Australian literature? Captain Hillcoat (Charles Henry Lorenzo Westernra Hillcoat in full) was of a clan of emigres. His immediate family, after time in India, emigrated to America when he was a child while at least one uncle headed for Australia. His sister Cecilia joined the Australian rush in 1866 so the place was soon packed with cousins, nieces and nephews. He certainly sailed Australian waters, as the captain of the Anglo Indian in the eighties and as captain of the Futami Maru in the late nineties. His wife died in Townsville during a voyage, in 1883, and he himself died in Gosford, NSW, in 1902.
SHIEL, MP. The Rajah's Sapphire. London, Ward Lock 1896. Small octavo publisher's gilt decorated green cloth (spine faded); two plates. A rather good copy. Au$350
First edition and first issue. Shiel's second book, part of the Nautilus Series, one of those well meant but ephemeral nineties series. The green cloth hates light and hates handling. This is among the best copies I've seen of any of the titles in the series. A cursed jewel thriller. Myself, I like cursed violins but each to his taste and Shiel cursed enough things to keep us all happy.
LINDEN, Annie. Gold. A Dutch-Indian Story for English People. London, John Lane 1896. Octavo publisher's decorated cloth blocked in blind; 285pp and 1896 publisher's list. A little browning; a rather good bright copy. Au$475
First edition of this rare Indonesian lost race fantasy; there was also a New York edition which looks not much easier to find. I'm not sure exactly where the dread lost land of Moa and its mountain of gold is but our explorers sail through the Moluccas on their way from Java; once we leave the Banda Islands the geography turns imaginary. Ms Linden starts slow but ends pretty ruthless; most of her worthy characters die miserably while our hero is pretty much a faithless greedy madman well before book's end.
There is enough, more than enough, local colour to convince me that first hand experience is at work here. I found mention of a couple of short stories - one about untameable half-caste women (who populate these pages too) - by Linden and one other novel, in English: a domestic drama dismissed as "Dutch fiction" in the one notice I saw; nothing else in English or Dutch.
GRIMSHAWE, Helena. Trapped by Avarice. London, Digby Long 1896. Octavo publisher's blue ribbed cloth. Edges foxed, still, a good bright copy. Au$200
First edition of this most uncommon high society stew of murder, theft, fraudulent wills, gipsies and stolen children. I haven't read anything so marked by the absence of an editorial pencil and so in need of one since that model of publisher's inattention, Stoker's 'Lair of the White Worm'.
Just how did the villain have a secret gipsy mother and brother yet have an admirable father and attend a good school? How did he have a mother apparently younger than him? How did the Stanhopes sail to America in a liner decades before it was built? Decades before any such liner was built. How did Stanhope's brother spell his name? They had to yacht around the Great Lakes so that Stella could be gored by a buffalo but why did we have to read the whole itinerary? Why did the Honourable Cecil, so determined to unravel the mystery of the theft of the diamond necklace, forget to visit the jewellers for fifteen years? How could Stella and Ethel write regularly for fifteen years and each not wonder why they never had a reply? How did even a falsely accused village peasant get away with three months hard labour for the theft of the priceless necklace? And why did no-one wonder what happened to it? I have many more questions but that's enough for now.
There is supposedly a copy of a third edition of this at Newcastle (UK) but I doubt it. Helena Grimshawe - who has apparently used family records for the American parts - seems a one book author, as does Henry Grimshawe, also published by Digby Long in the same year.
HORNUNG, E.W. [Ernest William]. Irralie's Bushranger. A story of Australian adventure. NY, Scribner's 1896. Narrow octavo publisher's pale cloth elaborately blocked in dark green. A bit smudged, a couple of blotches near the end, a quite decent copy. Au$100
First American edition, contemporaneous with the English; part of the Ivory Series while the London edition was one of the New Vagabond Series. Here we meet Stingaree, the apparently well-bred bushranger, who reappears in later Horning stories. In this near farce of mistaken identity Stingaree makes the mistake of moving too far south of his usual patch, to the Riverina station of the dauntless, blue-eyed, young Irralie.
Adolphe Belot & Kuroiwa Ruiko. [Ningaikyo]. Tokyo, Fusudo 1897 (Meiji 30). Three volumes 22x15cm publisher's colour woodcut wrappers, thread tied (some short tears and chips). Three folding colour woodcut frontispieces by Tomioka Eisen. A couple of owner's stamps in each, title written in ink on the bottom edges). Browning, smudges and signs of use. Certainly well read but still rather good copies for popular thrillers like this. And most important: those frontispieces are intact* and clean. They are the magic you don't get in the original or English translations. The third frontispiece shows those women warriors at work in their spiked armour. They liked to get in close and had no mercy. Au$500
First edition of Kuroiwa Ruiko's translation of Belot's trilogy La Sultane Parisienne, La Fievre de l'Inconnu, and La Venus Noire (1877), a prodigious potboiler with indominatable women explorers and a ferocious race of women warriors in the darkest of a dark Africa ruled by the black venus. An English translation was made in 1879 by H. Mainwaring Dunstan as 'A Parisian Sultana', Ruiko usually worked from English translation of French books.
I admit I skipped large hunks of Dunstan's translation but wherever I opened each book I usually had to go back several pages to understand how the current turmoil and drama had started. There's a lot of it. And a fair bit involves sex and jealousy. The dull parts are Belot proving the depth of his research. Just as Tolkein used maps and documentary contrivances to establish the reality of his middle earth, Belot used explorers like Livingstone, Baker, Speke, Grant, Schweinfurth et al, to buttress his hellish fantasia of Africa. An unpleasant place swarming with unpleasant people.
Ruiko was busy. Apart from journalism, running newspapers and writing what might be the first modern Japanese detective novel he kick-started Japanese detective fiction by publishing a squillion translations or adaptations of novels by authors like Jules Verne, Gaboriau, Hugh Conway, Anna Katherine Green, Marie Corelli, A.M. Williamson, George Griffith, H.G. Wells and most of all, Du Boisgobey. Translation is an approximate description of Ruiko's work; he was open about slashing, expanding and rewriting his material to fit what he wanted the novel to say.
Worldcat finds no copy outside Japan but *I'm sorry to say that the NLA has the three frontispieces minus the books. This is what happens to so many of these novels.
CAPES, B.E.J. [Bernard]. The Mill of Silence. Chicago, Rand McNally 1897. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in gilt and green. A bit used, a few spots, a large owner's name on the front fly; still a most acceptable copy. Au$500
First edition of this long neglected thriller, a murder mystery soaked in horror and the uncanny, missed by bibliographers for a century. Doubtless the innocuous title and sylvan binding is partly to blame. An American book but an English story by an English writer, it was well enough described by the Star reviewer in Christchurch, New Zealand: "The author ... dearly loves the handling of the grim, the uncanny, and the morbid; he is a master in the painting of suffering humanity, suffering as a shuttle tossed by the hand of Fate." (Star, 1903, review of the later London edition). Not just humanity, our narrator can't even walk home through the woods without stumbling over a bunny "with glazing eyes and the stab of the ferret tooth behind her ear."
Secret after secret is unveiled in paroxysms of terror and hatred but babbling madness usually raises more questions than it answers. Does anyone survive the book? I'm still wondering.
[CUFFE, William Ulick O'Connor]. The Earl of Desart. The Raid of the "Detrimental". Being the true history of the great disappearance of 1862; related by several of those implicated ... London, Pearson 1897. Octavo publisher's decorated cloth blocked in gilt and white. A hint of browning; quite good. Au$300
Only edition of this lively high society/South Seas/feminist/lost race fantasia which sees a clutch of England's finest damsels kidnapped by well bred wastrels and yachted away to a South Sea island. Soon they come across the less necessary half of a race, seemingly of Mediterranean origin, whose women leave all men between childhood and dotage on another island and visit once a year. Our aristocratic bandits discover that being British and useless is useless when young women can have their choice of good looking capable men. It's only short step to a polygamous queendom.
This seems to result in a mulitude of children. I suspect that Desart didn't think through the mechanics of woman run polygamy but perhaps I misjudge him. Without the usual British infant mortality rate there might not be an impossible number of kids.
This was, I think, Desart's last novel. I couldn't find much in the way of reviews but I am pleased to report that the Launceston Examiner thought it "a medley of puerilities." With a tough editor Desart might be still read today. He could write fluently and entertainingly but he did get side tracked easily, sometimes forgetting what novel he was writing. His Lord and Lady Piccadilly was racing into the last bend before the home straight when he abruptly introduced a horde of new characters and turned a tragedy into a social satire for a couple of hundred pages. And he is prone to letting his cynical authorial asides overwhelm a page.
FYNE, Neal. The Land of the Living Dead A narration of the perilous sojourn therein of George Cowper, mariner, in the year 1835. London, Drane [1897]. Octavo publisher's illustrated pale green cloth blocked in black (spine a bit browned); eight plates by E.A. Holloway. A rather good copy of a book that, like many of us, resents handling and aging. Inscribed and signed by Fyne. Au$1250
First edition; a South Seas lost race thriller and hardly utopian. A ruthless godlike figure holds the power of life and death over his subjects, exploiting a decent bit of scientific investigation by someone at sometime in a sinister and lethal Wizard of Oz (or perhaps certain churches?) bit of imposture.
A couple of experts have conjectured that Neal Fyne is a pseudonym since no other books appear under that name. But a pamphlet, I suspect poem, 'In the Middle Watch' by Neal Fyne appeared in 1891 and Drane advertised, in 1897, that ''The Fulfilment of the Prophecy and Other Stories by Neal Fyne, Author of "The Coffin Shop," "Land of the Living Dead," etc. etc.'' was in the press. This is not necessarily a lie; the press could well be the cupboard in the corner where dubious manuscripts were kept. Neither does it prove the pseudonym notion either way. The inscription here doesn't help: it shows only that Fyne was not giving anything away if that wasn't his name.
By the way, if you type the phrase "land of the living dead" into Trove's newspaper search you will find a 1945 letter describing Sydney suburb Artarmon as the land of the living dead.
SWIFT, Benjamin [ie William Romaine Paterson]. The Tormentor. London, Fisher Unwin 1897. Octavo publisher's cloth. A rather good copy. Au$125
First edition of this mildly disappointing tragic thriller. Disappointing for fans of traditional crime thrillers fooled by the title and chapter headings. But we are given poison and death and any book that received reviews like, "Its story is unwholesome and its style deplorable. One hates to receive such a book for review, for it is filled with darkness, meanness and crime," can't be without value.
FRITH, Walter. The Sack of Monte Carlo. An adventure of today. Bristol, Arrowsmith; London, Simpkin Marshall 1897. Octavo publisher's maroon cloth blocked in gilt and red. The spine appears to have been retouched but still a rather good copy. Arrowsmith's 3/6 Series, no. XXIX. Au$285
First edition. Is this the first caper novel? The modern caper novel - parent to the caper film - I mean, forget Robin Hood and suchlike. Our young English gentleman narrator tells us how he, stymied in love for the while and unhappy and restless, comes up with the idea of looting the casino at Monte Carlo and sets out to enlist some chums - first among his sister's friends for some inexplicable reason, then among his own old school friends and members of his club - and rustle up a fast steam yacht for their getaway. His sister does sign up for the job.
Gentleman, and lady, burglars were thick on the ground within a few years, they must have been elbowing each other in Mayfair salons, country house ballrooms and the gaming rooms of Monte Carlo but I can't think of an earlier book having such fun with the planning, execution and scrapes of the big heist.
FARJEON, B.L. [Benjamin Leopold]. Grif. A story of Australian Life. Seventeenth edition. London, Hutchinson 1898. Octavo publisher's cloth, spine decorated in gilt. A little browning at the very ends, quite a nice copy. Inscribed and signed by Farjeon with an accompanying letter. Au$350
A gift from Farjeon to Mrs Granville Ellis in 1901. The short letter on Farjeon's letterhead explains that it isn't always easy to find spare copies of his books but he is sending three, including this one, and Harry - Farjeon's composer son - is sending along some sheet music just published. Mrs Ellis must be the American born journalist, Anna May (or Mai?) Bosler, who married Granville Ellis twice and wrote under the name Max Eliot. Elizabeth Pennell described her as "that awful American newspaper woman ... a vile specimen! Vulgar!" Gifted copies of Farjeon's books have a longer history than Farjeon himself. Decades later Harry used his father's own copies as school prizes.
GRIFFITH, George. The Gold-Finder. London F.V. White 1898. Octavo publisher's illustrated green cloth (a bit used, spine wrinkled); frontispiece. An ok copy. Au$75
First edition of this thriller involving the Gold Magnet, high speed yachts, merciless modern piracy and tangled family secrets.
PUGH, Edwin & Charles Gleig. The Rogues' Paradise. An extravaganza. London, Bowden 1898. Octavo publisher's illustrated dark red cloth blocked in black and white; frontispiece by Stanley L. Wood. A pleasing copy. Au$225
First edition of this criminal romp set in the vaguely situated tropical country of Berona, a haven for Britons fleeing society or the police. This reads like it aimed to be a play or was worked from one, with a hefty dose of Oscar Wilde banter early on and finishes as farce with lightning fast entrances and exits, misdirection and sotto voce asides all over the place.
MARSH, Richard. The Datchet Diamonds. London, Ward Lock [1898]. Octavo publisher's maroon cloth; two plates by Stanley L. Wood. Some pages opened coarsely and a couple of minor blotches but still a very good copy. Au$185
First edition; a detective thriller.
HUME, Fergus. The Rainbow Feather. NY, Dillingham 1898. Octavo publisher's decorated cloth. A very good copy. There is a small triangular bump in the cloth on the front cover which puzzled me until I realised it was a patch applied to the inside of the cloth before binding - they weren't going to waste a foot of cloth because of a small flaw in the material. Au$165
First American edition contemporaneous with the London edition. An incredibly convoluted, even for Hume, murder mystery which begins with a cackling gipsy foretelling murder for a gorgeous but unpleasant young woman and misery for her equally gorgeous and unpleasant suitor. There is of course a twist. "And the remarkable result is that out of the thirteen active personages in 'The Rainbow Feather' ten are proved to have been present at the murder. It is pressing the credulous reader rather far, this transforming a quiet scene of assassination into a large social function." (Munsey's Magazine).
LAW, Frederick Houk. The Heart of Sindhra. A novel. NY, Tennyson Neely [1898]. Octavo publisher's blue cloth blocked in silver and red (spine a touch rubbed). A rather good copy. Au$200
First edition of this India set fantasy thriller with a lost city, native fanaticism and some mightily portentous dialogue.
NEWCOMB, Josiah Turner. A Fight for a Throne. NY, Tennyson Neely [1898]. Octavo publisher's red cloth blocked in white and black (spine a bit darkened and rubbed). Inscribed and signed by Newcomb in December 1898. Au$400
Only edition of this scarce Pacific thriller; part lost race and part Ruritanian romance in which the exiled king and his glorious daughter must be restored to their south seas kingdom and our hero must atone for his father's crime. We won't question how the hero came across the heroine by chance on a remote Long Island beach just before his father drops dead leaving his confession of the crime that killed the queen and sent the king and baby daughter into exile in New York. Like the actual result of the self-immolating - presumably sardonic - remark of Holmes, once we have eliminated the impossible there is nothing left.
Newcomb was a New York newspaper editor at the time he wrote this, later he turned lawyer and politician; this seems to be his only book.
Amano Kaoru (preface). : [Tanteijitsuwa : Iwai Teizo]. Tokyo? Nakamura Sojiro 1898 (Meiji 31). 21x14 publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; three double page illustrations. With expert repairs to the spine and a new back wrapper. An excellent, fresh copy in a case by binder, writer and fastidious collector Ikuta Atsuo. Au$200
First edition. I bought this under the heading of, (roughly translated) Real life heinous murderer. We can discard the real life immediately. The preface is by Amano Kaoru, almost as obscure as anonymous, the author. I can't find a record of this anywhere but a publisher's advertisement in another book.
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