The Fair God: A Tale Of The Conquest of Mexico.

WALLACE, Lew. Illustrated by Eric Pape.

$1,250.00

Item Number: 109623

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1899.

First edition of Union General Lew Wallace’s first novel. Octavo, two volumes, original publisher’s embossed morocco with gilt titles to the spine and front panel, rebacked, top edge gilt, patterned endpapers, elaborately illustrated with both in-text and full page engravings within gilt frames and with lettered tissue-guards by Eric Pape, decorated initials. One of 250 numbered copies inscribed and dated by the author on the limitation page, “Very respectfully Lew Wallace, Nov. 7, 1898” and signed by the illustrator beneath the frontispiece of volume I. This is number 11. In very good condition.

Wallace began writing The Fair God in 1843, but it was not published until 1873.The popular historical novel, with Cortez's conquest of Mexico as its central theme, was based on William H. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico and sold several thousand copies in its first year. Its sales continued to rise after Wallace's reputation as an author was established with the publication of subsequent novels including Ben-Hur, his second and best-known novel.