People of the Abyss Cloth - 1903

New York: The MacMillan Company, 1903. First Edition . Cloth. Near Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. [photographs]. Near Fine. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1903. First Edition [BAL 11877], Sisson & Martens p. 15. Signed and inscribed by Becky London to her friend Mark Zamen. Photographically illustrated. Hefty octavo, xiii,[1],319,[1]+[3]ad pp. Gray/Blue cloth stamped in black and gilt, Top Edge Gilt. Rubbing and light soiling at spine and cover, leaving some wear to gilt, else basically flawless. Near Fine. The true first edition, in a rather exceptional state of preservation, of People of the Abyss, perhaps the scarcest of London's ventures into social investigative journalism. In 1902, posing as an out-of-work sailor, he "went underground into the belly of the beast" - the slums of London's East End - where, living on the street and working odd jobs, he was accepted by the locals and was able to collect the experiences retold here. Widely lauded and reprinted still as an activist socio-political masterpiece, it also deeply affected London himself, who said: "No other book of mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the economic degradation of the poor." L85