The Trance of Fitzerse: A Tale of Two Centuries

First edition. [iv],356 pp. Bound in publisher's royal blue pebbled cloth, front and rear covers ruled in black, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, floral endpapers. Very Good, slight lean to spine, rubbing along edges, foxing to edges and early pages. Scarce. Not in Bleiler. A Horowitz high spot. The first and only edition of an unusual, self-published novel of hashish-inspired time and space travel reminiscent of Irving's Rip Van Winkle and Fitz Hugh Ludlow's The Hasheesh Eater, which was published 20 years earlier. The Publishers' Circular and Booksellers' Record of British and Foreign Literature in the year of publication called it, "A very curious story; it opens in England during the civil wars." Eventually "we are introduced to the hashish-eaters, by whom [the protagonist] is sent to sleep, and wakes up in England, in the middle of our century, when he is not only astonished at the slight changes that have occurred, but duly astonishes his friends, who assume his brain is a little out of order. He gets tolerably right again, and then goes to America, where he mixes with the spiritualists. The book is peculiar, and to many may prove interesting.".…