Antiquarian Auctions

Auction #114 begins on 11 Apr 2024

Stead (W.T.)

THE HISTORY OF THE MYSTERY;

Published: “Review of Reviews” Office, London, No date (1897)

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or, The Story of the Jameson Raid.

Tout savoir c’est tout pardonner.

By W.T. Stead (Abridged)

The Masterpiece Library. Penny Popular Novels. – 58 (Edited by W.T. Stead)

76 pages + 4 pages of commercial advertisements, original light green printed card wrappers with advertisements, stapled binding. The wrappers are chipped around the edges and lightly soiled, the contents on newsprint are browned.

W.T. Stead (1849 – 1912), pioneering investigative journalist and crusading newspaper editor. He was sympathetic to the cause of the South African Republics and campaigned against the Anglo-Boer War and took the initiative in establishing the ‘Stop the War Committee’ in London. In contrast, in this novel, he is strongly pro-Cecil Rhodes describing his as ‘the Abraham Lincoln of South Africa’.
He died in the Titanic disaster on 15th April 1912. He was considered to be one of the most famous Englishmen on board.

Stead launched the Masterpiece Library of Penny Popular Novels in 1893 and it eventually ran to about 100 novels. It was touted as ‘the most efficient agency that has yet been devised for making our best literature familiar to the mass of the nation.’ Punch dubbed the series “Penny Steadfuls”. The novels were abridged into 30,000 to 40,000 words from novels which were originally six or eight times as long. They were, however, hugely popular with the much enlarged reading public of the time. For example Ridder Haggard’s She sold 500,000 copies in Stead’s abridgement. (from Altick (R.) The English Common Reader (1957))

THE HISTORY OF THE MYSTERY is an abridgement of a longer novel with the same title published in 1896. It preceded the Select Committee of Parliament which was appointed to investigate the events surrounding the raid. In his preface Stead writes that in his novel ‘the reader will find all the clues which he will need to understand why things happened as they did.’

  • Binding Condition: Fair
  • Overall Condition: Good
  • Size: 8vo (180 x 120 mm)
  • Sold By: Clarke's Africana & Rare Books
  • Contact Person: Paul Mills
  • Country: South Africa
  • Email: [email protected]
  • Telephone: 021 794 0600
  • Preferred Payment Methods: Visa & Mastercard via PayGate secure links and Bank transfers.
  • Trade Associations: ABA - ILAB, SABDA


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