THE RESCUE. A Romance of the Shallows.

First UK trade edition, first printing. Signed presentation copy. Publisher's original green cloth with gilt titles to the spine. A very good copy, the binding square and the cloth and gilt bright and fresh. The contents, with the bookplate of Sir Robert Jones to the front pastedown and a nick to the fore-edge of the front endpaper are otherwise clean throughout. The inner rear hinge is cracked but holding (a common issue with this title due to the size and weight of the 416 page text block).

Inscribed by the author in black ink on the front endpaper "Sir Robert Jones / with the greatest / regard and affection / from Joseph Conrad / 1920". The recipient, an eminent surgeon and pioneer of orthopaedics, was treating Conrad's wife Jessie. Whilst the last of the three novels in the 'Lingard Trilogy' to be published, after Almayer's Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896), the events related in The Rescue (based on Conrad's experience as mate on the steamer Vidar) precede the earlier publications.