The Black Tulip By Alexandre DumasTranslated By Mary D. Frost . [suede leather binding]

New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Publishers, 1902 .. 8vo. 16cm x 10.8cm. pp.4/pp.294 . A very good copy, well bound in brown suede leather, over soft card covers, with short yapp edges (a little rubbed). The front cover with gilt title and art nouveau style dedcoration, spine with blind stamp title, a little faded, with wear to top & tail. Top page edges gilt. Decorated endpapers (with a similar design to that on the front cover). Neat dedication to front free-endpaper, dated 1918. Sepia portrait frontis of Alexandre Dumas, with toned tissue guard. Clean text throughout. "Alexandre Dumas's novels are notable for their suspense and excitement, their foul deeds, hairsbreadth escapes, and glorious victories. In The Black Tulip (1850), the shortest of Dumas's most famous tales, the real hero is no Musketeer, but a flower. The novel - a deceptively simple story - is set in Holland in 1672, and weaves the historical events surrounding the brutal murder of John de Witte and his brother Cornelius into a tale of romantic love. The novel is also a timeless political allegory in which Dumas, drawing on the violence and crimes of history, makes his case against tyranny and puts all his energies into creating a symbol of justice and tolerance: the fateful tulipa negra..." - See COPAC ** Alexandre Dumas (1824-95) was a pioneer of the Romantic theatre in France, for which he wrote a series of colourful historical dramas, although it is as a novelist that he is best known today. His works include The Three Musketeers (1844-5), La Reine Margot (1845) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-5).