The Golden Blight

First Printing. Octavo (19.5cm); mauve cloth, with titles stamped in gilt on spine and front cover; [8],9-350,[2]pp. Though the title page credits it to C.D. Williams, the frontispiece and four black & white plates of illustrations are signed by John Sloan. Gentle sunning and some light dust-soil to spine, neat early owner's ink name and tiny label at upper front pastedown, with a small, faint splash mark to upper corners; Very Good+, with the spine titling somewhat brighter than usual. "In The Golden Blight (1916), an early example of modern science fiction, a physicist whose sympathies are with the proletariat in their opposition to World War I invents a machine which from any distance can reduce gold to ash. Despite the villainous attempts of the capitalists and their kept government to prevent him, he eventually attacks even the gold in the United States Treasury Building in his effort to bring a stop to the war. When the financiers of the world gather in the Treasury's vaults to observe, as one of them has predicted, the reconstruction of the ash back into its original form, the metal, kills the financiers, wrecks the Treasury Building, and leaves for wiser posterity a Caesar's Column of gold, bodies, and masonry. Freed of their servitude to gold, which, as the physicist explains, represents capitalism, the people of the world immediately declare peace and vote in the Cöoperative Commonwealth" (Rideout, pp.59-60). REGINALD 04906.…