The Rescue: A Romance of the Shallows
Price: $50.00
Hardcover. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1920. 1st Edition. Very Good.
First English edition, second issue (of the first issue, only 40 copies were printed and distributed privately; the text also differs slightly between these two issues and the American edition.) Publisher's green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, with Aldine House device blind-stamped to front board. Very good, with mild soiling to front board and spine, slight dimming to spine gilt, light rubbing to joints and corners, light soiling to bottom edge of text block, and bottom corners of pp. 107 and 109 lightly chipped. Overall, an attractive example. Wise 57. The Rescue tells the story of Captain Tom Lingard, who is waylaid by a stranded yacht while sailing to provide aid to the leader of a native tribe. When Lingard becomes romantically entangled with the wife of the yacht's owner, he is torn between duty and passion. The Rescue is the third book in what is sometimes called the Lingard Trilogy, as the main character is also featured in Conrad's books Almayer's Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896). Conrad started writing The Rescue in the late 1890s and then set the manuscript aside for twenty years before finally resuming work on it in 1918. The longstanding Sewanee Review wrote, "...The Rescue, we think, is Conrad at his best...it is fully worthy of his great gifts and his finely disciplined powers." Item #JC105
