The Thirty-Nine Steps. London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1915. First Edition. Pp 253, [1]. Publisher’s blue cloth, lettered in black. Cloth darkened & lightly scuffed, age-toning to contents pages, neat ownership name to front endpaper & title page.

Tipped-in typed note from the Author Signed as ‘Tweedsmuir’ & John Buchan.

One of the earliest examples of ‘man on the run’ thriller archetypes subsequently used for films as a plot device. It became one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most commonly used themes: an innocent man is mistakenly accused of a crime and must clear his name.

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada from 1935 until his death in 1940.