How I Escaped; A Novel

New York: Hurst & Company. Very Good. (c.1888). Later Printing. Hardcover. (pictorial cloth; no dust jacket) [external wear to covers and corners, gilt spine lettering rubbed, bottom front corner bumped, spine a little turned; hinges a little tender, but binding fully intact; minor spotting on a few pages]. (B&W frontispiece portrait of A.C. Gunter) Novel set during the Civil War. W.H. Parkins (whoever he was) was obviously a less important personage than Archibald Clavering Gunter in bringing this book before the reading public. Only Gunter's name appears on the book's spine and front cover, and it's printed on the title page in letters twice the size of the author's name; on top of that, in the back of the book there are a full dozen pages of advertisements for Gunter's various books (which, by the way, help to date this particular printing at circa 1904); for gosh sake, even the frontispiece portrait is of Gunter! Although forgotten today, in his time Mr. Gunter (1847-1907) was a popular and prolific playwright and novelist (largely self-published, through his own Home Publishing Company), as well as a stockbroker and engineer. He was the author of two dozen produced plays and nearly forty novels; by contrast, this particular book appears to have been the sole effort of Mr. Parkins. .