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Besant, Walter. The Doubts of Dives. Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith; London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1889. First edition. Octavo, pp. [1-4] [1] 2-192 [note: fly leaf at front and rear]. Rebound in light gray cloth with red leather spine label stamped in gold, decorative green and gold floral endpapers, top edge gilt. The front fly leaf has an old bookseller's rubber stamp. A very good copy without any significant flaws. A rare book. # 169. $225. Issued as Arrowsmith's Christmas Annual for 1889, certainly in paper wrappers and possibly also in cloth, but, like most Victorian annuals, now very scarce. This title was not in the collection of Wolff, whose Besant section (#411-468) was extensive. The U.S. edition (Lovell, 1889) came out as The Lament of Dives. A short personality-exchange fantasy, structured as a romantic comedy, in which two friends in London, one (Denny), who is rich but idle and jaded, envies the incentive to work which he imagines gives zest to the life of his friend (Kit), a hack journalist, who does indeed enjoy life but is shiftless and indebted, bestirring himself to work only when he must. Kit, in turn, envies the wealth and ease of Denny's life. What if they could trade places? The author's style is slack and verbose, producing more in the way of frowsy old sentiments and bony platitudes than novelistic nutriment. Another writer might have been able to tell the same story more vigorously in half the time. But for students of the personality-exchange sub-genre (a fruitful one in the late Victorian period), this novel does deliver some interesting variations. And Besant also deserves credit for the originality of his premise (a rich man complaining of the enervation caused by his inheritance) when the vast majority of English popular fiction at this time chronicled the quest to obtain fortune by inheritance or marriage. Seller Inventory # 169
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