The Great War in England in 1897

Tenth edition.  330, [vi, publisher’s adverts], with tissue-guarded monochrome plate frontispiece and numerous further monochrome plate illustrations interleaved in text.  Pictorial cloth-covered boards with titles and illustrations front and spine.  8vo.  Boards rubbed on extreme corners and spine ends, slightly rubbed around a slightly faded spine.  Some spotting on text block edges.  Gift inscription, dated 1895, inked on the front paste down. Short crack on front hinge.  Hint of toning to first and last few leaves, with the very occasional small mark or smudge.  Square and solidly bound. 

A pleasing vintage copy of this invasion fantasy novel by William Le Queux, first published in July 1894.  It depicts a fictional invasion of England by a Franco-Prussian alliance. The story is a reversed depiction of the real alliances of World War One, in which a small resistance group fights to repel the invaders; it is an early example of the invasion literature genre and know for its strong contrast of Le Queux’s later work, The Invasion of 1910, which features Germany as the invading force.  Popular that the time, it reached its tenth printing just a year after publication.