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First impression of the first edition in English. Translated by Alfred Sutro. Illustrated with black and white line drawing frontispiece showing white ants guarding the queen. ***Very good in olive-green cloth-covered boards with black titles and black ant illustration to spine. Edges of boards slightly rubbed. Top corners slightly bumped. Tiny, brown printed and cream contemporaneous bookseller's book label to bottom of front free endpaper: 'John M. Watkins Publisher and bookseller 21 Cecil Court, W.C.2'. Light offsetting to front free endpaper and rear pastedown. A few bottom page corners creased towards the rear. Pages clean. Spine tight. No dustwrapper. 192mm x 132mm. 213 pages including bibliography to rear plus two-pages of publisher's adverts for Maeterlinck essays (The Life of the White Ant is the last listed) and plays, and also Nature Books by Frances Pitt to the rear. ***Chapters: Introduction (by the author); The Termitary; The Problem of Nutrition; The Workers; The Soldiers; The Royal Pair; The Swarming; The Devastations; The Occult Power; The Morality of the Termitary; Their Destiny; Instinct and Intelligence; Bibliography. ***'The greatest problem of the hive confronts us again in the termitary, where it becomes even more insoluble for the reason that the organisation is more complex. What is it that governs here? What is it that issues orders, foresees the future, elaborates plans and preserves equilibrium, administers, and condemns to death? Not the sovereigns, those miserable slaves to their duties, dependent for their food on the good will of the workers; the sovereigns are imprisoned in their cages, they alone in the city have not the right to circulate within its precincts. The king is a sorry creature, timid, frightened, always crouching beneath the conjugal abdomen. As for the queen, she is perhaps the most pitiful victim of an organisation in which there are only victims, sacrificed to an unknown god. She is sternly guarded; and when her subjects consider her laying to be no longer adequate, they cut off her supplies; she dies of starvation, they devour the remains - for nothing is allowed to waste - and replace her. For this purpose, as we have seen, they always keep in reserve a certain number of undifferentiated adults; and, thanks to the prodigious polymorphism of the race, can quickly turn one into a reproducing agent. ***Nor is it the warriors, unfortunate monsters crushed by their weapons, cumbered with pincers, devoid of sex, devoid of wings, stone-blind, and unable to eat. It is not the winged adults, who make only one dazzling appearance, as tragic as it is ephemeral: ill-starred princes and princesses martyred for reasons of State, or by its collective cruelty. There remains the workers, who are the stomachs and bellies of the community; they seem to be at once the slaves, and masters, of all. Is it this horde which forms the Soviet of the city?' ' (quote from page 137, ch IX: The Occult Power). ***Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. Recurring themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. His plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement. Maeterlinck was accused of plagiarism with his 'Life of the White Ant' (La Vie des Termites) which plagiarized the entomological book 'The Soul of the (White) Ant' by the Afrikaner poet and scientist Eugène Marais. ***First impression of the first edition in English in its original cloth-covered boards. Of interest to collectors of entomological and literary first editions by Maurice Maeterlinck. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc. Seller Inventory # 3824
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Bibliographic Details
Title: THE LIFE OF THE WHITE ANT
Publisher: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, Museum Street, London W.C.
Publication Date: 1927
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: First Edition in English
