Conrad, Joseph

8vo, first English edition, presentation copy inscribed by the author's widow ("To Harold and Ada Goodburn with affectionate regard from Jessie Conrad September 1925.") on the front free endpaper, introduction by Richard Curle, frontispiece drawing of Conrad and Captain Bone after drawing by Muirhead Bone, annotations to front pastedown, front free endpapers and title concerning Conrad's interest in Napoleon and his work on the novel, presumably by one of the recipients, 4pp. publisher's advertisements at end, original horizontally-grained maroon cloth, device in blind on upper cover, lettered in gilt on spine, with, loose, the spine and upper panel of the pictorial dust-jacket, spotting, including to title, front free endpaper browned, spine of binding sunned, dust-jacket frayed and chipped 

Harold and Ada Goodburn (authorial inscription)

Keating 190

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First English edition of Conrad's last, posthumously published, unfinished novel set in Genoa during the period of the Napoleonic Wars. It was preceded by serializations in Hutchinson's Magazine, the American serial version in the Saturday Review of Literature and the first American book edition, a limited issue of which was published by Doubleday on 3 July 1925 with the regular issue appearing on 15 September. This English edition was published the following day. Harold Goodburn had been tutoring Conrad's younger son John for his Cambridge entrance examination in Engineering, but on Conrad's death in 1924, this plan was dropped, and John stayed with his mother.