SIGNED - Martin Cruz Smith Rose Franklin Library First Edition Leather Bound 1996 Collectible Victorian Mystery Novel

A striking collector's piece — a Franklin Library Signed First Edition of Rose by Martin Cruz Smith (author of Gorky Park), personally signed by the author on the limitation page. Published in 1996 exclusively for The Signed First Edition Society, this copy is bound in black top-grain leather with an elegant gilt rose medallion and Art Deco corner tooling on the cover and spine. The edition features specially commissioned frontispiece illustrations by Bruce Waldman depicting Victorian mill-town England, along with a beautifully illustrated fold-out map of the novel's fictional "Hannay Pit" coal mine. Endpapers are vividly hand-marbled in warm orange tones. Set in Victorian Wigan, England, Rose follows American mining engineer Jonathan Blair, sent by a coal baron to find a missing curate — a search that draws him into the hidden underground world of the pit girls who worked England's coal mines. In excellent condition — crisp gilt tooling, tight binding, bright clean pages throughout, vivid marbled endpapers. A handsome addition to any collection. From the Chapter & Vintage collection — old things, new chapters. Carefully packed and shipped with full insurance.