The Thirty-Nine Steps - photo 1
The Thirty-Nine Steps - photo 2
The Thirty-Nine Steps - photo 3

The Thirty-Nine Steps

Lot 8
28.09.2023 13:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 19 530
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1016347
Lot 8 | The Thirty-Nine Steps
Estimate value
£ 12 000 – 18 000
The Thirty-Nine Steps

John Buchan

John BUCHAN (1875-1940). The Thirty-Nine Steps. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1915.



A Hollywood classic: first edition in book form, complete with the extremely rare dust-jacket. First serialized in the All Story Weekly from 5 June-31 July 1915, and in Blackwood's Magazine from July-September 1915 under the pseudonym 'H. de V.', this first edition in book form was published in October the same year. 1915 was the year British publishers started adopting pictorial dust-jackets printed in colour, and The Thirty-Nine Steps' jacket is a noted rarity, since it was common practice to discard previously unadorned jackets. The book itself - viewed by Buchan as a 'shocker,' i.e. an adventure story with scarcely believable events and plot - became the basis for several film adaptations, the first of which was Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 production. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone.



Octavo. (Very faint toning confined to marginal extremities of the textblock, as usual due to the type of paper stock used.) Original blue cloth, front and spine lettered in dark blue (front cover with faint abrasions); original dust-jacket with pictorial front cover with title printed in red and black with price of '1/- NET' in red, this repeated on spine, spine and rear cover lettered in blue (jacket restored at spine, folds, upper and lower edges and more extensively at inner corner of front cover, with first 4 letters of title on front cover, most of title and imprint on spine and ampersand in imprint at foot of rear cover supplied in excellent facsimile); custom quarter morocco box. Provenance: Cooper Bros (Southend bookseller's ticket on rear pastedown).

Place of origin:Northern Europe, Europe, United Kingdom
Auction house category:Printed books
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
28.09.2023 – 28.09.2023
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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