Books

FIRST EDITION, Colonial issue, toning to paperstock as usual, ownership inscription to half-title, pp. viii, 2-245, [10, ads], crown 8vo, original mid red boards, backstrip and upper board lettered in black with publisher's device in same to lower, a few waterspots and gently darkened in patches, the backstrip faded with slight lean to spine, light rubbing to extremities, top edge black now faded, publisher's lists to both endpapers, discreet ownership initials to flyleaf which has a tiny nick to fore-margin, good. A significant, and scarce, issue of the first edition perhaps the earliest issue of this major late nineteenth-century novel (one might note that for the same author's contemporaneous Certain Personal Matters, the issue in Heinemann's Colonial Library antedates at least in terms of what is printed on the title-page its UK counterpart, published by Lawrence & Bullen). Certainly, in terms of the paperstock used, along with other issue points such as the misnumbering of the first text-page as p.2, this issue of The Invisible Man is identical with the Pearson first edition and we can assume it was printed synchronously at The Gresham Press the paratextual material relating to the publisher, of course, differs. It was usual for the distribution rights to in foreign territories to pass to a different publisher: here the beneficiary of this arrangement is a suitable one Heinemann had published the domestic editions of Wells's major fiction hitherto, The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau, and would shortly after publish The War of the Worlds. No other copies of this Colonial issue currently for sale, and only two holdings on WorldCat (the Bodleian and the University of Calgary).

H.G. Wells's "The Invisible Man" tells the story of a scientist named Griffin who discovers the secret to becoming invisible. With themes of unchecked scientific ambition and the consequences of isolation, this novel remains one of Wells's most enduring and thought-provoking works.