Dead Man Manor by Valentine Williams (Hodder and Stoughton, 1st edition 1936) with dustwrapper

 

Dead Man Manor

Valentine Williams
Hodder and Stoughton, 1st edition 1936

The first book by Valentine Williams (1883-1946) featuring the tailor and amateur sleuth Horace B. Treadgold. This character would return in “Mr. Treadgold Cuts In” (1937) and “Skeletons Out of the Cupboard” (1946).

Hardback – publisher’s dark blue/black cloth with yellow title label to spine, in dustwrapper. pp. 316, [4] publisher’s title list. Size: 7.75 x 5.5 inches approx. (199mm x 135mm).

Original dustwrapper however having undergone some ‘restoration’ work at some time. Backing paper pasted to verso with some painting-in of the missing pieces – head and tail of spine which each extend to rear and front panels, upper corner of front panel, upper corner of rear panel, and various small areas of ‘touching-up’; rubbed, worn and creased with some flakiness to paper on folds; some grubbiness and staining to rear panel. Cloth a little rubbed and worn to extremities, especially to spine ends. Offsetting and foxing to endpapers; name in ink to front paste-down; paper-clip and old pencilled pricing impressions to upper corner of front free endpaper; some foxing to preliminaries and last few pages, occasional foxing throughout otherwise pages tanned but generally clean; some spotting to page edges.

Nonetheless, remains a reasonably nice copy and uncommon to find in its dustwrapper, albeit with some restoration work – displays well.

[SOLD]

ref. The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery by Bruce F. Murphy (Palgrave, 2001)

<< Literature & Modern Fiction