Herbert G[eorge] Wells. The Croquet Player: A Story. London: Chatto & Windus, 1936. ...
Description
Herbert G[eorge] Wells. The Croquet Player: A Story. London: Chatto & Windus, 1936. First edition. Octavo, pp. [1-10] 1-81 [82] [83: printer's imprint] [84-86: blank] [note: first two and last leaves are blanks], original mottled green and black cloth, printed paper label affixed to spine panel. Donald A. Wollheim's name stamped in ink on front and rear free endpapers. Touch of asphaltic residue from old dust jacket protector along bottom edges of front and rear endpapers, else a fine copy in poor pictorial dust jacket with chip from crown of spine panel, light wear at edges, dust soiling, and missing the rear flap.More Information:
"This story is a satire written in the form of an allegory. In its symbolism it has close affinities with The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928)." - Hammond, p. 44. "In some ways a more mature telling and redirection of 'The Red Room,' or hauntings as due to mental fragments that have assumed a power beyond their immediate origin. It is also a symbolic statement of the psychosis emergent within Western culture just before World War II. 'A sickness in the very ground of our lives, breaking out here and there and filling men's minds with a paralyzing irrational fear.' The ghost story as a statement of the spiritual breakdown of society... One of Wells's better late works." - Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 1683. Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-1224. Barron (ed), Fantasy Literature 3-360. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 225. Stableford, Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950, p. 174. Bleiler (1978), p. 205. Reginald 15020. Hammond B18. Wells Society 125.
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