[Rarebooks] FS: John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps: First Edition. 1915. Nice copy

[A.E. Tishman]

Ezra from Aardvark offers this Saturday night special.

Buchan, John. THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS. London, England: William Blackwood and Sons, 1915. First Edition. 8vo. 7 1/4" x 4.75". Blue cloth with dark blue lettering. 253 pp. with a single advertising leaf. On rear free endpaper, someone has delicately penned: "First Edition, Original Cloth". Light rubbing to boards and extremities of this cheaply-produced and comparitively fragile wartime edition. Light toning to margins. A nicely-priced copy of a groundbreaking book, a genre-maker if ever there twas soch an aminal. Very Good. Hardcover.

Scottish author John Buchan wrote this pioneer, now-classic spy thriller whilst convalescing in bed with an ulcer. It was his first "shocker", as he called it—a story combining personal and political dramas and marked a turning point in Buchan's literary career. The the first of five featuring the protagonist Richard Hannay.The novel was his first "shocker", as he called it—a story combining personal and political dramas. It marked a turning point in Buchan's literary career and introduced his adventuring hero Richard Hannay. He described a "shocker" as an adventure where the events in the story are unlikely and the reader is only just able to believe that they really happened. 

Pictures:

https://www.ezrabook.com/pages/books/85059/john-buchan/the-thirty-nine-steps

“Thank God it was a black night. The moon was well on its last quarter and would not rise till late. My thirst was too great to allow me to tarry, so about nine o’clock, so far as I could judge, I started to descend. It wasn’t easy, and half-way down I heard the back-door of the house open, and saw the gleam of a lantern against the mill wall. For some agonising minutes I hung by the ivy and prayed that whoever it was would not come round by the dovecot. Then the light disappeared, and I dropped as softly as I could on to the hard soil of the yard…”. (P. 159).

																	$950 plus $10 Priority.


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