EDGAR WALLACE FIRST EDITIONS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : Tallis Press, 1905. First edition. His first thriller – the assassination of the Foreign Secretary. Launched in a blaze of publicity Wallace could not afford, the front cover advertises a total of £500 in prizes to anyone capable of solving the final mystery. The present copy has the original numbered and perforated competition slip at the rear.
Crown 8vo (19cm). 224,[ii]pp. Folding frontispiece. Perforated competition slip. Original amber cloth, lettered in black; spine just a touch dulled; some spotting, mainly of edges and opening leaves, but a very good copy.

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1926]. First edition. Wallace looks back – and forward – “We were the poor who were not satisfied with our poverty ... newspaper-boy, cabin-boy, soldier, journalist, writer – what next”? It is worth noting of Wallace that at least 165 films had been made from his books by 1965, that he wrote the original script of “King Kong”, and that in one year at the height of his fame a quarter of all the fiction bought in England came from his pen.
Post 8vo (21cm). (254),[ii]pp. Original red cloth, lettered in gilt and ruled in gilt and blind; lightly worn; mark at foot of spine; prelims and edges spotted; a little shaken; corner cut from front free endpaper; a serviceable copy. Pencilled contemporary inscription giving a date of December 1926.

£20

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London : Hodder & Stoughton, [1926]. First edition : the first issue, listing just twenty-one titles on the verso of the half-title – and in the primary binding, without the crimson circle and signature device. “Harry the Lancer came into Burton Street Station to show his ‘brief,’ for he was out of Dartmoor only that Monday, having served twenty-one months short of seven years ...”.
Crown 8vo. 308,4pp. Original yellow cloth, ruled, lettered and blocked in black; lightly worn and a little dulled and scuffed; edges and endpapers spotted; somewhat shaken; a serviceable copy. Faint contemporary ownership inscription unusually positioned on lower edge.

£20

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London : W. Collins Sons & Co., [ca.1930]. A reissue, with a cancel title-page, of the second edition published by Collins in 1929. Thirteen tales of Educated Evans, the cockney tipster – “Saturday night in High Street, Camden Town, and the lights were blazing and the tram bells clanging dolefully ...”. First published in 1924.
Crown 8vo (20cm). (252),[iv]pp. Original blue cloth, ruled and lettered in black; a few faint marks and spots, but a very good, bright and sound copy. With the ownership inscription of Douglas Nairn of Elmslea, Dundee, as well as the small bookseller’s ticket of Mrs MacGregor of the Dundee Book Mart.

£20

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