Descrizione

2 vols., 8vo., First Edition thus, with numerous illustrations by Sidney Paget in the text; original publisher's binding of pictorial blue cloth, upper boards and backstrips blocked and lettered in gilt and black, red sprinkled edges, primrose endpapers, neatly recased, backstrips mildly faded (but all gilt wholly legible), a good, clean set. First appearance of Doyle's desert drama, present here in the original eight instalments with a total of forty-six illustrations by Paget (the book version, published later in the same year, contains only forty). 'The author visited Egypt at the end of 1895 and in January of the following year went with his family on a Cook's tour up the Nile to Wady Halfa. The threat from the Dervishes was then very real, a serious menance to civilisation and was the cause of some anxiety. Two months later the long-expected war broke out, and he chose to accompany the special force as a correspondent for the Westminster Gazette. He was at Korosko on 10 April and during the weeks that followed became well versed in the landscape and political realities of the country' (Green & Gibson). The first volume also contains Doyle's illustrated account 'Life on a Greenland Whaler'. SCARCE. Green & Gibson, p.106.