Jacob's Ladder

Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1921. First edition. Hard cover book bound in the publisher's original cloth. 20 cm. 303 pp. Frontispiece illustration by F. Vaux Wilson. In very good condition. Previous owner's name/date/address written on the front end pages. Small bookseller's label affixed to the rear fixed end page. Hinges tight, pages bright. Spine lean. Moderate edge wear/bumping to the cloth covers. Jacob Pratt, a middle-class Englishman, finds himself bankrupt because of his brother's failure to return some money Jacob has loaned him. As a consequence, for several years he leads a miserably unhappy existence as a leather salesman. Suddenly the brother in America makes a fortune in oil, and Jacob finds himself one of the wealthy men of England and correspondingly famous. Having a keen sense of the responsibility his money brings and of his own past wretchedness, he decides to devote himself to helping the "under dog" and to outwitting the sharks who prey upon people of small means.