Translated by John Lees (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Second printing of U.K. edition, complete in two volumes. Boards show light shelfwear, with a couple of corners slightly bumped; gilt text clear on spine and covers; discoloration to endpapers; binding tight; pages clean. Chamberlain, a British/German/French philosopher, rose to prominence as a Richard Wagner champion (he eventually married the composer's daughter) and an advocate of Aryan superiority. 'The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,' a 'racial history' of the world through the 1800s, credits 'Aryan blood' with pretty much every human accomplishment, claiming the Greeks (!), the Romans (!!), and Jesus (!!!) as Aryans. The two-volume book, written in German and published in Germany in 1899 as 'Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,' could hardly have been more flattering to Germans of the era, and it became a best-seller in that country, laying the pseudohistorical groundwork for Adolf Hitler's antisemitism; indeed, Chamberlain met with and encouraged Hitler in the early 1920s. Copies of the English-language translation, first appearing in 1910, are startlingly uncommon. 3.5 pounds total. 100-page introduction + 578 + 580 pages + 16 pages of publisher's listings (some foxing to these final pages). Buyers, contact me for a possible discount.…