Comte De Gabalis.
New York / London: The Brothers, Copyright 1914. First US Edition Thus. Hardcover. Large octavo. xxvii + 352pp. Original gilt titled deep green cloth, gilt publisher's device to upper board, sepia plates with tissue guards, publisher's logo printed on both pastedowns, apposite which is their motto "We seek to serve that thou mayest illumine thy Torch at its Source". The first US edition of the first English translation of a fictionalized French account of a meeting between the author, the Abbé de Villars (1635-ca. 1673), a French clergyman, and the mysterious esoteric mater, the Comte de Gabalis. The Comte supposedly initiated de Villars, into the occult sciences, introducing him to the elemental realms etc. In 1711 Alexander Pope wrote of de Villars book "The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted with. The best account I know of them is in a French book call'd Le Comte de Gabalis, which both in its title and size is so like a novel, that many of the Fair Sex read it for one by mistake." Clearly Pope, and other later writers like Bulwer Lytton, viewed the work more as a vessel for the subtle spread of esoteric knowledge, than a work of fiction. This edition has a parallel commentary on the text, by Lotus Dudley. The first UK edition was published a year earlier (1913) in London (England) by "The Brothers" and "printed at The Old Bourne Press." The present edition has a New York imprint (Harry B. Haines) and was printed in Paterson, New Jersey. Light shelf wear, spine a bit darkened and slightly canted, spine ends and corners lightly bumped, endpapers unevenly browned, book shop label on rear pastedown. Rear endpaper hinge has a couple of small splits but is still firm. Pages lightly toned but fresh and unmarked, owner's note on front endpaper, else a tight, bright VG+ copy (no dust jacket). Item #67350
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