[First Edition] The Beetle

First edition, 25th impression. 8vo. Original red cloth. Dust-jacket. Published in 1897, the same year as Dracula, The Beetle comfortably outsold Stoker's novel for years - the reading public having decided that the ancient shape-shifting Egyptian horror pursuing a rising MP through the London fog was the superior nightmare, and only posterity reversing the verdict. This 25th impression is popularity made visible: still selling briskly a third of a century on. Marsh (born Richard Bernard Heldmann, a production-line sensation novelist with a colourful past of his own) has a further claim on the weird-fiction shelf: he was the grandfather of Robert Aickman, connoisseurs' choice for the century's finest writer of strange stories. Ink name and date stamp to front free endpaper, bookseller's discreet label to front pastedown; boards slightly bumped; jacket with bookseller's small stamp to foot of spine, some wear to edges, but otherwise very good.

Estimate:£710.8

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