The Column of Dust [Inscribed by the author].

First edition. Octavo, pp., [viii], 304, 40 of publisher's catalogue. Publisher's blue cloth; titled in gilt within decorative frame to spine. Ink stamp of Besant Memorial Library (i.e. the Theosophical Society Library, Edinburgh) to front paste-down; inscribed by the author in ink to front free end-paper 'To Miss Cholmondeley // with love from the writer // Evelyn Stuart Moore // September 1909' (Underhill married Herbert Stuart Moore in 1907, but used her maiden name in print). Library stickers and trace of adhesive to spine; small area of mottling to upper board; shelf-wear to extremities; closed tear to cloth of lower joint; upper hinge cracked and lower hinge starting. Internally rather clean. A serviceable copy. An inscribed copy of an occult novel in which the protagonists 'grope towards vision' by the socialist, pacifist, and esotericist who was the first woman to be invited to lecture at Oxford University. Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) was a prolific author of mystical fiction. Her studies on Margarey Kempe and Julian of Norwich raised the public profile of previously obscure women prophets, she wrote translations with Rabindranath Tagore, and wrote several works of experimental symbolic fiction, of which this was her last. A scarce book by a remarkable woman. Blain, Clements, and Grundy, 'The feminist companion to literature in English', pp., 1105-06; Bleiler, 'Checklist of science-fiction and supernatural fiction', 197. …