Empire.

VIDAL, Gore.

Item Number: 146890

Franklin Center, Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, 1987.

Signed limited first edition of the fourth historical novel in the ‘Narratives of Empire’ series, privately printed exclusively for members of The Signed First Edition Society. Octavo, Smyth-sewn and bound in full top-grain leather specially processed for fine books by the Cromwell Leather Company with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in four compartments within raised bands, gilt decoration to the front and rear panels, all edges gilt, silk ribbon laid in, marbled endpapers, frontispiece portrait of Gore Vidal in a period setting by Mark Summers executed in an intricate scratchboard technique and specially commissioned by The Franklin Press for this first edition, illustrated with black and white photographs. Signed by the author on the front flyleaf. In fine condition.

"Artfully woven with the real players and events of our history is the story of Blaise and Caroline Sanford, brother and sister, and their intense rivalry for a contested inheritance and for power in newspaper publishing . . . Vidal's feel for backroom political dealing and barded front parlor gossip is flawless; his grasp of the major political events, masterful. Happily his juices really flow in the full-blown realizations of major historical actors" (The Editors).