Oddsfish!
New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, n.d. 12 mo. (7 5/8 inches tall), original orange cloth, printed in black, original printed dust jacket. Gilt bookseller's label. Mild tanning and foxing to blank endpapers, gentle toning to the text, mild puckering to spine, slight bump to lower corner, minor edge-wear to original jacket. A near-fine copy. Item #1414
"I COULD TAKE THAT AT LEAST WITH ME INTO THE CLOISTER, AND COULD PRAISE GOD FOR IT ALL MY LIFE LONG—I MEAN THE CONVERSION OF THE MAN THAT WAS CALLED KING OF ENGLAND" 457
Handsome American edition of Oddsfish!—Robert Hugh Benson's great historical novel of the Last Days of King Charles II—complete in the original printed dust jacket.
The follow-up to Come Rack! Come Rope! (1914), Benson's seventeenth-century tale of "those desperate days of intrigue and persecution when England went mad with the fiction of the 'Popish Plot.'" Benson's historical novels were admired by writers like Hilaire Belloc, fellow Catholics who were "frustrated at the Protestant bias of the Whig historians" (Joseph Pearce). Printed with a brief Author's Note with Benson stressing the careful accuracy of his portrayal of King Charles II, the text (in four parts) opens with a Prologue and concludes with an Epilogue describing the death of the King: "At a little before noon, without a struggle or agony of any kind, His Sacred Majesty ceased to breathe." This edition, from the publisher's Popular Priced Library, is undated and the jacket is unpriced. The back panel of the jacket list four titles by Benson. Joseph Pearce. Literary Converts.
Price: $100.00