Bookseller's Advertisement as Quixote Pastiche

A Chapter from the Book Called The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote de la Mancha which by Some Mischance Has Not Till Now Been Printed [Quixote]

[Machen, Arthur] [Cervantes, Miguel de]

Publication: London: George Redway, [1887].

Notes: Machen's very scarce third book and first foray into fiction. According to the author, in his notes for Danielson's Arthur Machen: A Bibliography, "This is an advertisement. Redway, besides publishing new books, sold second-hand ones...During the summer of the year '85, I was occupied in cataloguing these books, and chiefly in writing notes under the titles. They dealt principally with the occult sciences... Later, in 1887, it struck me that a parody of the famous chapter in Don Quixote relating to the examination of the Knight's library by the Curate and the Barber would make an amusing advertisement of the occult library...and so I wrote the 'chapter' aforesaid."

A wonderful pamphlet, combining antiquarian bookselling and a pastiche of Don Quixote by one of the leading supernatural writers of his era. This piece is the first entry in S. T. Joshi's three-volume critical edition of Machen's Collected Fiction.

16 pages; self wrappers. See Danielson, pp. 7–8; and Goldstone and Sweetser's A Bibliography of Arthur Machen, no. 3.

Edition + Condition: First edition (first and only printing). Covers a bit tanned, else a very good to near fine copy in string-tied self-wrappers.

Item No: #364378

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