Children of the Mist: A Novel.

PHILLPOTTS, Eden [Whitaker Wright].

$975.00

Item Number: 137170

London: A. D. Innes & Company, 1898.

First edition of the author’s classic work. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth with gilt titles to the spine and front panel, tissue-guarded frontispiece. Presentation copy, inscribed by famed English swindler Whitaker Wright on the front free endpaper, “Clara Hubbard from Mr. Whitaker Wright Lea park Mitford Surrey.” Whitaker Wright was regarded as a financial wizard at the turn of the 20th century in London. He built the Park Lane house at the height of his power. Like his celebrated country home at Lea Park, where he had music and billiard rooms under an artificial lake, No. 18 Park Lane was a luxury mansion, stone-faced and with magnificent interior decorations and mahogany paneling. In 1904, Whitaker was sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud. Just after he was taken from the dock at the Law Courts, he poisoned himself with cyanide of potassium. With an autograph letter signed and entirely in the hand of Eden Phillpotts laid in. In near fine condition. Small bookplate to the pastedown. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

English author, poet and dramatist Eden Phillpotts maintained a steady output of three or four books a year throughout the second half of the twentieth century. He produced poetry, short stories, novels, plays and mystery tales. Many of his novels were about rural Devon life and some of his plays were distinguished by their effective use of regional dialect.