The Battle of Dorking - Reminiscences of a Volunteer. From Blackwood's Magazine May 1871.
First separate edition, 1871
The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer (1871) was published anonymously by George Chesney in the May 1871 issue of Blackwood's Magazine and rushed into print as a separate pamphlet within weeks, driven by the sensation it caused. The story is told as a retrospective by an aging volunteer, looking back fifty years to the German invasion that destroyed British power forever. The fleet is defeated by torpedo weapons, the army overwhelmed, London falls, and Britain ends the tale a broken nation stripped of its empire and forced to pay ruinous reparations. The narrator's grief is not only personal but national, the lament of a man who watched a great country fail itself through complacency, political cowardice, and willful unpreparedness.
The pamphlet caused an immediate uproar, was debated in Parliament, drew a public response from British Prime Minister Gladstone, and was reprinted and imitated across Europe and America for decades. It effectively invented the future war narrative as a literary form and established the template of the cautionary near-future catastrophe that fed directly into the dystopian tradition of the twentieth century. As I.F. Clarke wrote, it was the work after which "there were very few of these tales that did not employ the devices that had alarmed a nation, amazed a continent, and annoyed the Prime Minister."
First separate edition, first printing, presumed first issue, with no copyright notice on the title page, as described by Lloyd Currey.
Softcover. First Edition. Small octavo, 64 pages, followed by 8 pages of ads, in the original pictorial purple wrappers. London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871. #11462.
Very good. Fading to spine and edges. Discreet bookseller blindstamp to front cover. Pencil bibliographic notes to title page and a few scattered pencil annotations in the margins.
The pamphlet caused an immediate uproar, was debated in Parliament, drew a public response from British Prime Minister Gladstone, and was reprinted and imitated across Europe and America for decades. It effectively invented the future war narrative as a literary form and established the template of the cautionary near-future catastrophe that fed directly into the dystopian tradition of the twentieth century. As I.F. Clarke wrote, it was the work after which "there were very few of these tales that did not employ the devices that had alarmed a nation, amazed a continent, and annoyed the Prime Minister."
First separate edition, first printing, presumed first issue, with no copyright notice on the title page, as described by Lloyd Currey.
Softcover. First Edition. Small octavo, 64 pages, followed by 8 pages of ads, in the original pictorial purple wrappers. London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871. #11462.
Very good. Fading to spine and edges. Discreet bookseller blindstamp to front cover. Pencil bibliographic notes to title page and a few scattered pencil annotations in the margins.