"ADMIRALTY PAPER".
[New York:] Privately Printed for Jerome Kern, [Christmas 1925]. Original blue-grey wrappers sewn with braided white cord.
First Edition, which consisted of 93 numbered copies, this being No. 33. This was a "lost essay" by Conrad, which he wrote in 1917 -- about the strafing of the Kent coast during the Great War. The manuscript (like many Conrad manuscripts) was the property of the financier John Quinn; in 1923 it was acquired by the collector (and famous songwriter) Jerome Kern. After the essay appeared in The Times in August 1925, Kern had these 93 copies printed as Christmas gifts at the end of that year. The following year it would be collected (as "The Unlighted Coast") in Conrad's LAST ESSAYS.
This is a near-fine copy, with a few nicks in the edges of the wrappers. Supino B3.14.0 (this copy); Keating 214. With the discreet bookplate of Conrad bibliographer David Supino. Item #15818
Price: $475.00