March 2021 Catalogue

13 I m a g i n e d W o r l d s E a r l y M a r c h 2 0 2 1 “There Are Heroisms All Round Us” 11. CONAN DOYLE, Sir Arthur. The Lost World. London, 1912. Octavo, original navy cloth, custom slipcase. $1600. Click for more info First edition, ordinary-paper issue, of Conan Doyle’s “robust adventure story,” illustrated with eight tipped-in plates, including frontispiece photographic portrait of “the members of the exploring party.” As early as 1889, Conan Doyle mused about writing “a Rider Haggardy kind of book… dedicated to all the naughty boys of the Empire.” By 1911 “he was writing it at last… inspired in part by local fossil evidences of prehistoric life” ( Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters , 577-8). The Lost World , his “finest scientific romance, is a robust adventure story that brought a new sophistication to a standard boys’ book formula and provided the lost race story with its ultimate flourish” ( Anatomy of Wonder II:354). Without very rare original dust jacket. Bookplate of English Liberal politician Sir Herbert Leon. Only infrequent scattered light foxing to text, endpapers a bit embrowned; cloth mildly rubbed. An extremely good copy. “There’s many a man who never tells his adventures, for he can’t hope to be believed.”