The Doubling of Joseph Brereton

No signatures. Some creasing and small tears to margins of frontispiece. ; Uncommon. 317, [1 (blank)], [2 (advertisements)] pages + 2 black and white plates (including frontispiece). Red cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine and front board. Page dimensions: 185 x 121mm. Crime fiction with some romance and western elements. The novel begins in Texas. A British man Joe Brereton closely resembles Frank Somers of Denver in appearance. A plot is made for Somers to impersonate Brereton in order to gain an inheritance back in Britain. Someone thought to be Brereton is murdered, but the wrong man is killed. Frank Somers then travels to Britain impersonating Brereton. "'My name is not Frank Somers,' said the Englishman, with an amused smile. 'Then what the British heliograph is it' returned the Yankee, in blank amazement." - page 6. "It was a warm evening in Denver some days after the events narrated in the previous chapter, when a somewhat cadaverous Yankee was seen to ride into the town on a jaded mules. The reason thy this man had let himself out of the train on a fairly steep up-grade, some fifteen miles back, might possibly be unraveled at sight when the name of the lean Yankee is written down as Jersey Craggs, late of Texas, formerly of Cincinati." - page 40. "Craggs greeted him with, 'There's two back teeth gone from the left-hand-lower jaw. That must be seen too." Somers felt at the back of his lower jaw. 'Just my luck,' he said : 'two first-class molars - sound as a bell. Surely they won't go poking about my back teeth, Craggs!' 'Wal, that's jest it. You never know where they mightn't light around. Sposin', now, Joe Brereton had written home, and told 'em he had got two back molars on a gold plate, what'd be more natural than that they should want to see 'em when he got home, eh Oh no, Franky; you must have them molars coaxed out, and new 'uns laid in, or the show's bust. And wot's more, you must have a new tooth put in in front." - page 58. "Take two human beings, the one a man and the other a woman, set them down hand in hand upon a mossy bank in a secluded part of the forest where Mother Nature has contol of all, and unless a cast-iron law has bound the woman and his own wrought-iron the man, what saint would waste his time in admonishing them Let Nature draw these two nearer, lip to lip, heart to heart, and would the angel of the Lord come down to tell the woman there were two men in the world exactly alike to all appearance, and that she was folded in the arms of the wrong one" - pp. 88-89. [Reference: Bagnall H1012] ; 8vo

Product Info

Publisher: Ward, Lock & Co.

Year: 1903

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

RenaissanceBooks

Address: PO Box 335 Dunedin, Not Required

Website: https://renaissancebooks.co.nz

Country: New Zealand