The Collapse of Homo Sapiens

The Collapse of Homo Sapiens (1923) by P. Anderson Graham is an early British post-apocalyptic novel in which a man granted supernatural visions of the future is shown England as it will exist two centuries later. What he finds is a civilization reduced to savagery. London is in ruins, reclaimed by forest and flood. The Thames flows wild and unnavigated. The remnant population is divided between a tiny settlement of survivors clinging to organized society under a Union Jack and great tribes of feral human beings who have reverted entirely to a pre-civilized state. The collapse is attributed to moral and social decay, successive wars, and a final invasion by what the novel calls "the coloured men," a racial framework Graham presents without disguise and that sits at the center of the book's argument. The Settlement is descended from those who held out after the invaders withdrew. The novel builds its account through embedded manuscripts, songs, and testimony alongside the first-person narrative, giving it the texture of a found-document archive. Graham was a naturalist, journalist, and author of rural studies of England, and his descriptions of the reverted landscape are among the most vivid passages in the novel.

This copy is inscribed on the front free-endpaper by Graham to P. A. Keppie and dated July 17, 1923, with a holograph letter signed by Graham laid in, written from Hope Grange, Hemel Hempstead. In it Graham asks Keppie to read and recommend the book, notes that early reviews have been favorable, and closes with a question about the dust jacket illustration by Stella Langdale. The original dust jacket, which is rare at this date, is present.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, green cloth boards with gilt lettering on front panel and spine. London and New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1923. #11477.
Very good in original dust jacket with tears and some shallow chipping. Extremely rare in jacket.