SHERARD, R.H. [Robert Harborough]. - Agatha's Quest.

London, Trischler 1890. Octavo publisher's colour illustrated wrapper (frayed, spine chipped). Fairly used, with some dog ears and browning at the beginning but all solid and respectable enough for a cheap thriller. ¶ Doubtless the first edition despite being called the "fifteenth thousand". This was the usual way Trischler puffed new books without downright lying. The number was their print run based on pre-orders. Trischler was a short-lived firm. They began as the Hansom Cab Publishing Company with Hume's masterpiece, morphed into Trischler and were dead by 1892. A sensational mystery thriller starring a woman jornalist; something that impressed Jules Verne so much that he contributed a prefatory letter about this new subject for fiction, assuring Sherard of success. This in turn impressed George Locke so much that he was eager to add this unknown B item to Verne's bibliography (Spectrum v3).Agatha's Quest annoyed the Saturday Review critic, the only review I've found: "It is highly improbable that so transcendent a genius as Agatha would have married the comsumptive cur who turned out to be a murderer; nor would she as a newspaper-woman have given up her "assignment" in America for the weak reasons allotted. The author has decidedly primitive ideas about people who let lodgings; ... also it may be usual for aggressive strangers who wear disguises, and who shriek horribly upon awaking, to address their landladies by their Christian names ..."

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