1939 The Thirty-Nine Steps

Description

Publishers' Original Binding, Uncommon, With Dustwrapper

The nineteenth impression of this novel, which was first published serially in All-Story Weekly in June 1915, and in Blackwood's Magazine between July and September 1915. It was then first published as a book during the October of the same year. 

In the original unclipped pictorial dust wrapper.

The wrapper describes this work as "The Book of the Film", referring to the 1935 film adaption of the novel directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Friedrich Robert Donat. Hitchcock's adaptation was deemed a "masterpiece" by Orson Welles and was rated the fourth best British film of the twentieth century by British Film Institute in 1999. 

Uncommon in the earlier issue dust wrapper priced at 1/- shilling, with the later 2/- shilling dust wrapper more common.

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan is a suspenseful novel which follows the stiff-upper-lipped Richard Hannay as he attempts to evade the same fate as a man called Scudder who is murdered in his flat. This work is one of the earliest examples of the "man-on-the-run" trope which became a standard trope of many thrillers since.