Octavo. Original dark blue cloth, titles to spine and within simple frame to front board gilt. Housed in a custom green full morocco solander box. First edition in book form, first printing, of Churchill’s only novel, his third published book, but the first he undertook to write, and the second he completed.
Churchill’s melodramatic tale of a liberal revolution in an autocratic Mediterranean state was originally serialised in Macmillan’s Magazine between May and December 1899. This edition, published in 4,000 copies on 1 February 1900, preceded the UK issue by twelve days, possibly as US law required a foreign-authored book to be manufactured in America to ensure copyright protection.
