The Adventures of Romney Pringle

London: Ward, Lock and Co, 1902. First edition. Cloth. Very Good Indeed. 8" by 5". None. The impossibly scarce blue version of the first edition of Richard Austin Freeman's important work of detective fiction 'The Adventures of Romney Pringle'. A vanishingly scarce and important work of detective fiction. Queen originally believed only six copies of this work existed. However, subsequently a very few more copies have been discovered in private collections and institutional collections.Despite there being only a handful of copies, the book was issued in both blue and red cloth.Freeman's bibliographer David Chapman notes that the blue copies were handled by the author and for libraries. This, Chapman suggests, would give the blue cloth priority. So far Chapman has located twenty six copies including this one. The white vignette to the front board is faded slightly. R Austin Freeman was a celebrated author of detective fiction. He invented the inverted detective story, and created one of the first medico-legal forensic investigator Dr Thorndyke. With a frontispiece and three additional illustrations. With two pages of publisher's advertisements to the rear. Loosely inserted is a slip of paper advertising this book to have been from the collection of American Sherlockian, John Ruyle. These works are written under the pseudonym 'Clifford Ashdown'. The Romney Pringle stories were some of Freeman's first successful tales. They were written in collaboration with John James Pitcairn, a medical officer at Holloway Prison. The tales to this work were first issued in Australia under the pseudonym of Ralph J Jay, a year before their appearance in Cassell's Magazine. The Oxford companion to Crime describes Pringle as 'a literary agent who earns a living by swindling crooks out of their ill-gotten gains. A very scarce first edition anthology of this important work in the Crime Fiction cannon. In the publisher's original cloth binding. Externally, very smart. Vignette to the front board is faded, as is common. Light shelfwear to the extremities of the work. Minor bumping to the extremities. Small tidemark to the front board. Front hinge is strained but firm. Internally, firmly bound. Pages are bright. Scattered spots, heavier to the first and last few pages. Very Good Indeed