This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/16/2023
WELLS, H.G. (1866–1946). The First Men in the Moon. Indianapolis: The Bowen–Merrill Company, [1901].
8vo. 12 plates including frontispiece by E. Herring. Original blue–grey pictorial cloth stamped in gilt (spine slightly skewed and a bit darkened, few tiny spots of rubbing at extremes). Provenance: ownership initials on front free endpaper.
FIRST EDITION, first printing sheets bound up in a later state binding with Grosset & Dunlap imprint on spine. The book was apparently not a great success and unsold sheets of the first printing were later sold to Grosset & Dunlap and bound up in this later binding. Bleiler notes that, “After ‘The First Men in the Moon’, Wells’ science fiction novels are never quite the same” and that “the last and most complex [of Wells’ early scientific romances] is ‘The First Men in the Moon’”. It was also the first of Wells’ works to be adapted for film in 1919. RARE IN THIS VARIANT BINDING. Bleiler, Science Fiction 2335; Reginald 15026; Currey, p. 518; Wells 18.