The Library of Edward Gibbon
( BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY ) ( Edward GIBBON ) KEYNES, intro., Geoffrey
[Second Impression.]
NEAR FINE COPY IN UNCLIPPED DUSTWRAPPER
Published: Bibliographical Society, 1950
Stock code: 239
Price: £120.00
8vo., Second Impression, on laid paper, with portrait frontispiece, 10 plates (one double-page) and three full-page facsimiles of titles in the text; original series binding of grey boards, holland back lettered in black, UNCUT AND LARGELY UNOPENED, a remarkably bright, clean copy in plain, unclipped dustwrapper (dustwrapper not shown in image).
This classic study was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1940, but Keynes recounts in his memoirs '...publication in 1940...very few copies were sold. A few months later most of the stock was destroyed by German bombs...fewer than 100 sets of sheets of the book had been salvaged. These I offered to the Bibliographical Society for sale to its members, and they were soon taken up, while Cape's volume became much sought after...This volume is therefore the second issue of the first edition'. Keynes, 'The Gates of Memory' (1981), pp. 246-251.