WILLIAMS, Charles.

£250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

A London Earthquake. First and only edition, decidedly uncommon, just 4 locations on Library Hub, BL, NLS, Oxford and Cambridge, WorldCat adds no further copies. "It is right to say that this story was planned at the time of the last earthquake at Ischia [28 July 1883]; was partly written at the time of the earthquake of Java [Krakatoa, 26 August 1883]; and was in type long before Claudian was produced at the Princess's Theatre [opened 7 December 1883] - was completed when rumours began to leak out about Mr. Wilson Barrett's famous sensation scene. It need not be said that it was finished before the Earthquake of April 22nd 1884, in Essex and Middlesex" (p.1). Interesting that the author lays such stress on his originality with reference to Barrett's production of W.G. Will's historical melodrama, with designs by E.W. Godwin, which was a sensational success running 248 performances. A contemporary review in the New Zealand Herald for 23 August 1884, gives a good idea of the content, and perhaps intent, of this pamphlet, it "gives in graphic detail the circumstances under which London was destroyed by one of these terrible visitations, and its subsequent re-building, whereby several great social questions of the day were satisfactorily settled".

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