WELLS, H. G.; COBURN, Alvin Langdon (illus.).

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The Door in the Wall and Other Stories. First edition, British signed limited issue, number 31 of 60 copies signed by both Wells and Coburn, the handwritten limitation statement facing the half-title and dated January 1915. Considered Wells's most disturbing and evocative work of speculative fiction, The Door in the Wall "deals with a favourite Wellsian theme: the intrusion of mysterious forces into everyday life" (Coelsch-Foisner, p. 180). Grappling with man's inability to bridge the gap between science and imagination, the fantastical and the rational, it chronicles the life of the eminent politician Lionel Wallace, who in childhood had once entered through a mysterious green door in a white wall to find himself briefly in a luxurious paradise, only to be tantalized throughout his adult life by visions of the door in the wall, and eventually driven mad."Six hundred copies of The Door in the Wall were printed in November 1911 [by Mitchell Kennerley of New York]; but publication was delayed by the spoilage of Coburn's photogravures, which were to be inserted in the books. When the crate arrived from England, it was discovered that a nail had accidentally been driven through the photogravures. Only three hundred copies were published with all ten illustrations. The remaining copies were sold with a label explaining the circumstances. Sixty copies of the Kennerley edition were issued in England in 1915 with Grant Richards's title page; these numbered copies were signed by both

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