E.V. Odle - Typescript of Juggernaut [with] A Signed First Edition of The Clockwork Man - Heinemann, 1923.

London, Heinemann, 1923. First edition, first impression. Hardback. A near fine copy of the book with a very good typescript. Let's put to bed the notion that E.V. Odle was Virginia Woolf's pen name under which she wrote science fiction. I can find zero evidence of this, indeed the original yarn contains more nonsense such as the Puppeteer God having unfluenced the 1999 film The Matrix. That book doesn't exist. Having compared handwriting in the included letter, it's clearly a different person. Of course, there's always that chance but then again there's always a chance for a lot of things. Edwin Vincent Odle was an editor for The Argosy in the 20s and 30s, he had two novels published in his lifetime a sf titled The Clockwork Man and a picaresque titled The History of Alfred Rudd. The present offering includes a signed first edition of that book, without a jacket and with just a little handling wear. The Clockwork Man is noted as (maybe) being the earliest example of a cyborg in literature (as in a human with robot bits), though Nyctalope from the previous decades may lay better claim to that title. Presented with the book is a letter dated 1936 wherein the author talks about his other works. The main item in this offering though is the/a manuscript for Juggernaut which wasn't published until 2016 in eBook. The typescript is 186 pages, rectos only with sporadic amendments. It's more than likely that this present typescript was the source for the 2016 eBook. An important little collection. [10042, Hyraxia Books].