[DAVIDSON, John]. & WILLS, C.J.

His Sister's Hand. A Novel.

First edition. 3 vols. 8vo., original green cloth lettered and decorated in black and red. London: Griffith Farran & Co., n.d, 1892.

£2,000.00

The slightest of wear to the binding extremities but a very handsome copy of one of the more extreme Grub Street manifestations.

Davidson was all but desperately taking any literary work he could get - a literary “devil” in his words - including ghost writing, not the misery memoirs that are a standby of today’s hack, but novels, particularly for C.J. Wills, a sociable medical man and former traveller. Davidson had a hand in five books “by” Wills, in only one of which he was credited. Sloan believes that Davidson was responsible for Volume 2 only of the current title: Wills received £200 for the entire book, Davidson £15 for his one volume. Wills did this more than once and Sloan’s dry description of Wills’ “fleecing” of Davidson reads like an Oscar Wilde plot device: “Wills had delayed placing some of the manuscripts with publishers, inclluding An Easy-Going Fellow in which they had half-profits. This put pressure on Davidson to sell his rights for some urgently needed cash. Of course it might have raised some awkward questions among the members of the Oriental Club with whom Wills enjoyed a reputation as a clever novelist if too many of his books had appeared at the same time.

Signed on the initial blank in all three volumes by Wills’s son Geoffrey. A brilliant, fine set.

Stock No.
236726