VICTORY. An Island Tale

1915. Garden City NY: Doubleday, Page & Company 1915. Original navy blue cloth decorated in gilt.

First Edition (published on March 26th, six months before the London edition) of Conrad's sad tale of Axel Heyst and the evil (for which read "Germanic") Schomberg. Due to the six-month delay of Methuen's edition, with the Great War raging, Conrad added to that edition a preface that discusses the "Teutonic psychology" of Schomberg. This American edition is noteworthy for its front endpaper map of the world, showing where Conrad's previous tales had all taken place. This is a clean, near-fine copy (slight rubbing at the extremities, some cracking of the endpapers). Supino A19.1.0; Cagle A19a. Provenance: there is a penciled signature dated "March 1915", the month of publication. Also, this was the copy of Walter E. Smith (who wrote the 1979 bibliography of Conrad) -- with a tender 1969 inscription TO him; laid in is a slip of his penciled bibliographic notes, which became the "Internal Flaws" on pp 63-64 of his bibliography.