* * * N E W A C Q U I S I T I O N S * J U L Y 2 0 2 4 B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S 35 "IT FALLS NATURALLY TO ME TO PUT THE STORY UPON PAPER": SCARCE FIRST EDITION IN DUST JACKET OF H.G. WELLS' TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED 35. WELLS, H.G. Tales of the Unexpected. London, 1922. Octavo, original red cloth, dust jacket. $6200 First edition of this collection of 15 short stories of the supernatural, science fiction and mystery, in scarce original dust jacket. “Boldly melodramatic and intellectually provocative, Wells’ early scientific romances (as they came to be called) remain unsurpassed for their imagination and visionary power… Where Wells’ contemporaries saw him as adding what Tyndall had called the ‘scientific imagination’ to 19th-century romance, the 20th century regarded him as the greatest of the forerunners of modern science fiction… He stands midway between the older traditions of the learned satire, the utopia, and the marvelous voyage, and the 20th-century growth of mass-entertainment technological fantasy” (ODNB). “’The Door in the Wall’… and ‘The Crystal Egg’ [both included here] can still be read as illuminating the desires of youth, and they provide the reader with an opportunity to observe reality through the sharp eyes of H.G. Wells… Wells thought often of the world of the future, and wrote widely about it after the turn of the century— providing us with… several versions of what would be the transmuted When the Sleeper Wakes, ‘The New Accelerator’ [and] ‘A Dream of Armageddon’ [both also included here]… It is remarkable how well many of the stories stand up today and from time to time are rediscovered” (Smith, H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal, 74). This collection includes: “The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes,” “The Moth,” “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham,” “Under the Knife,” “The Plattner Story,” “The Crystal Egg,” “The Man Who Could Work Miracles,” “A Dream of Armageddon,” “The New Accelerator,” “The Door in the Wall,” and others. Several variants of this book are known to exist, all of which utilize the same undated first edition sheets, the only difference between them being publisher’s advertisements inserted either at the front, the rear, or both. The binding is known with and without the publisher’s logo in black on the rear board. The present copy has four pages of undated publisher’s ads at the rear and no ads at the front, and no logo on the rear cover. The dust jacket, slightly taller than the book, is priced 2/6 net and with the last Wells title on the front flap being “Washington and the Hope of Peace,” from 1922, published at “6/- net.” Not in Hammond. Some foxing to text block edges, text and cloth clean, near-fine. Dust jacket with slight soiling and minor rubbing, small tape repair on verso at foot of spine, extremely good.
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