[Photobook] The Door in the Wall, and Other Stories

New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1911. Hardcover. Fine/Fine-. Limited Edition, one of 600 copies, of "one of the finest pieces of bookmaking ever done in the United States." (Chicago Evening Post, 20 October 1911)

Crown folio (370 x 260mm): [4],153,[1], with nine Aquatones and one photogravure. Publisher's quarter-bound straw-colored cloth over beige paper-covered boards lettered in gold, printed paper title label to spine; lacking the original box. Printed on watermarked French handmade paper, with types and decorations designed by Frederick W. Goudy, who used his new font "Kennerley Old Style" for the first time here. Owner's name to front fly-leaf, label rubbed, offsetting from gravure print, else tightly bound and clean (pristine, really) throughout, a superb example. Imagining Paradise p. 232-33. Truthful Lens 184. Wells Society 44. Collects eight short stories, all of which had appeared in previous collections.

The title page calls the prints are photogravures, but they are not (or, in this case, nine are not). When the gravure prints were shipped from England to New York, more than half were damaged, so many American copies contain few or no gravures, Aquatones (resembling high-quality halftones) having been substituted. In the end, only half of the planned 600 copies eventually were issued with the full complement of Coburn's gravures. Our copy has one gravure, but it's a beaut: "The Embankment," one of Coburn's more important pictures. According to
Coburn, "Mr. Wells originated the idea of using photographs to illustrate the stories. . . . For 'The Door in the Wall,' I cycled all round the suburbs of London day after day in all sorts of weather before I found the place that corresponded with Mr. Wells' vivid description." N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).