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This book is a small 32mo hardcover -- 3-1/4 X 4-5/8ths inches (8 X 12 centimeters) -- similar in size (though not actually listed as part of) the Harper's "Half-Hour Series." (You may call a book of this size a trigesimosecundo, if you insist.) 1878 date to title page matches copyright date -- no later printings mentioned. An apparent library rebind with newer Dutch marbled endpapers; Emory University Library bookplate to front pastedown, 1963 library acquisition stamp to copyright page, and a Date Due slip to marbled FFE (though said slip remains blank -- book appears never to have been borrowed.) This appears to have been a leather-bound copy -- original leather spine with gilt titles has been laid down. Boards now covered in white paper, the front board now showing a doodle in pencil. (Please see scan.) The string binding is holding well, though the front internal hinge is open. Pages moderately age-toned but still flexible and easily read. (Yes, the maiden name of Lucille Ball's character on "I Love Lucy" was similar, though spelled "McGillicuddy.") Authorship of this work generally attributed to the colorful South African-born British author, traveler, diplomat and Christian mystic Laurence Oliphant (1829-1888), who with his father the Chief Justice of Ceylon was credited with introducing tea to Ceylon by importing 30 plants from China to be grown on the Oliphant Estate in Nuwara Eliya. In 1851, our younger Oliphant accompanied Jung Bahadur from Colombo to Nepal, which provided the material for his first book, "A Journey to Katmandu" (1852). From 1853 and 1861 Oliphant was secretary to Lord Elgin during the negotiation of the Canada Reciprocity Treaty. In 1861 he was appointed First Secretary of the British Legation in Japan. He arrived in Edo in late June but on the night of July 5 the legation was attacked by a savage band of xenophobic Ronin. His pistols still locked in his luggage, Oliphant suffered serious injuries while defending himself with a hunting whip against an attacker wielding a Katana or -- more likely -- a two-handed Nagamaki. Oliphant subsequently returned to England, resigned from the Diplomatic Service, and was elected to Parliament in 1865 for Stirling Burghs -- though he made a greater success with his 1870 novel "Piccadilly." He then fell under the influence of the spiritualist prophet Thomas Lake Harris, who in 1861 had organized a small community, the Brotherhood of the New Life, in Brocton New York, on Lake Erie. Leaving Parliament in 1868, Oliphant first joined Harris in New York, then worked as correspondent for The Times of London during the Franco-Prussian War, and afterwards spent several additional years in Paris for the newspaper. There he met, through his mother, his future wife, the wonderfully named Alice le Strange. In 1879, Oliphant and his wife left for Palestine, where he hoped to promote Jewish agricultural settlements as a means of alleviating Jewish suffering in Eastern Europe. With financial support from Christadelphians and others in Britain, Oliphant succeeded in amassing sufficient funding to purchase land and begin settling Jewish refugees in Galilee. Et cetera. Again, this book -- which is quite uncommon -- is also unusually small -- half the size of a modern mass-market paperback. 94 pp. followed by 2 pp publishers ads for the novels of Wilkie Collins and W.M. Thackeray. Here reduced from $760.
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