When the sleeper wakes : a story of the years to come. (Presentation copy inscribed by H. G. Wells for Hubert Bland)

A$4,500 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Signed · Limited edition

London and New York : Harper Brothers Publishers, 1899. First edition. Octavo (200 x 130 mm), publisher s gilt-lettered red cloth (boards heavily waterstained, spine darkened and frayed at ends); half-title with a presentation inscription in ink signed by the author: To Mr. Hubert Bland / a present from Sandgate. H. G. Wells ; pp. [8], 329; illustrated with 2 (of 3) plates (lacking the frontispiece plate); front hinge split, text block starting to loosen in places, ex libris removed from pastedown. It is well known that because of poor health, H. G. Wells rented two houses in the Kent seaside town of Sandgate in 1899-1900. In December 1900 he based himself there permanently when he moved into Spade House, which had been designed for him by C. F. A. Voysey. It was there that the writer would spend much of the next decade. Whether Wells was already ensconced at Spade House when he inscribed this copy of his dystopian novel When the sleeper wakes for Hubert Bland, is not clear. Bland was the husband of Wells s close friend, the children s writer and fellow Fabian, Edith Nesbit, whom Bland had married in 1880. Provenance: Enid (Steele) Kelsey and Cyril E. Kelsey; thence by descent. Through her membership in the Fabian Society, Enid Frances Emma Steele (1885-1939), along with her future husband Cyril E. Kelsey, was associated with such important figures as H. G. Wells, Edith Nesbit and her husband Hubert Bland, George Bernard Shaw, and the Pankhursts. After their marriage in 1911,

• Binding: Hardcover

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