Park: A Fantastic Story

[Sheed & Ward], 1932. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" Tall (small). Slight sunning and fading to spine; slight soiling and rubbing to covers (cloth/boards; chiefly to extremities; very slight traces of dampstaining); slight bumping to upper right corner of upper cover (with consequent creasing, etc); slight internal browning to edges. [6], 128, [1] pages + plate. Historical fantasy and grotesquerie involving the noted African explorer Mungo Park, by the noted English canon (one of the possible candidates for the title character of Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'). BMC, volume 10, page 1166, column 65. One of 250 copies (the entire edition), printed by Rene Hague and Eric Gill at Pigotts, near Hughenden, Buckminstershire, England, April 1932; 'Published for the author by Sheed & Ward' (colophon); with Tegetmeier's copperplate etching printed by Collins and Dear, London. Bound in red-brown cloth over light gray boards, gilt-stamped spine, plain endpapers, lower edges untrimmed. Exterior as noted (gilt on spine still bright; top edges of boards only slightly dampstained), with interior relatively free of browning and/or foxing; a well-enough preserved copy of an extremely rare title. PROVENANCE: Signature of R. Ellis Roberts on recto of first blank; in addition, on the very top corner of the opposing page (making it the verso of the front free endpaper), in a very minute hand, is the inscription 'Gift Eric Gill' (possibly in Gill's own hand, but in a hand so small it is difficult to be certain either way).Tegetmeier, Denis (illustrator); 1 Engraved Illustration / Plate (frontispiece); 1 b/w Illustration (colophon).