Once a Week an Illustrated Miscelleny of Literature, Art, Science & Popular Information. Vol VIII December 1862 - June 1863. ( the Notting Hill Mystery )

by Once a Week Charles Felix Pseud John Retcliff Pseud Herman Goedsche

Price: £500.00 ($ 999.25)

[30 Day Return Guarantee]

[Ask bookseller a question]
[E-mail to a friend] [Shipping rates & speeds]

Description

London: Bradbury & Evans, 1863. Dark purple embossed cloth, gilt titles. Light rubbing, light dusting to page edges. The first volume of Bradbury and Evans rival to Dickens 'All the Year Round'. Many illustratins from Phiz, Millais, &c. Articles, stories, poetry &c. Although The Moonstone is creditied as being the first ever detective story, it was preceded by the Notting Hill Mystery, First published in this magazine, it was released in book form in 1865. Incorporating The paranormal & SciFi themes, it predates this genre by decades. Maybe this is dismissed by the authorities on detective fiction because they can't find a copy. Illustrated by George Du Maurier. Charles Felix' The Notting Hill Mystery (1862) is a cross between the crime story and the paranormal sf book. Such devices as telepathy between twins and the more supernatural forms of mesmerism are used to cause a series of murders. This means that although it has some features of the crime novel, much of it is content you might see on The X-Files. Nor is there much actual detection in the book. Much of it is told in a fairly straightforward, linear manner, with event following event in chronological sequence. It is not like the "story told in reverse, with detection uncovering the hidden facts of crime" in a typical mystery story. Notting does have a well done, if short, section with a policeman narrator, Sgt. Reading, in its middle, that contains some genuine detective work. The book is very different in tone from the 1860's casebook literature I have read. It seems much closer to the Sensation school instead. Both the use of twins, and multiple narrators seems derived from Wilkie Collins. And Felix' clear, logical, and in fact implausibly schematic narration reminds one of LeFanu. Where Notting surprises is in the use of multi-media material. There are chronologies, lists of logical points, a reproduction of a marriage register in table form, a facsimile of a letter, and, toward the end of the book, a floor plan than looks for all the world like those in later mystery novels. This book is distinctly pre-Gaboriau, who published his first crime novel in 1865. 'Biarritz' was a novel written in 1868 by the Prussian Secret Police agent, Hermann Goedsche. Besides being a police provocateur, Goedsche liked to put on airs, so he gave himself a fancy British penname, 'Sir John Retcliff.' Goedsche was a postal employee. As part of his Secret Police work he forged letters which were used as evidence to frame a democratic leader in 1849. He was caught and had to leave the postal service. So he became an anti-Semitic journalist and novelist. His novel, 'Biarritz,' has a chapter in which Jewish leaders are depicted as gathering every 100 years in a cemetery to plot the destruction of gentile society, This book was the the basis, of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hard Back. Good/No Dj. 40x180x255mm.