It Was Marlowe. A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries

by Wilbur Gleason Zeigler

Signed - First edition, first printing. The book that created the Shakespeare Marlovian theory.

1895. Signed - First edition, first printing. 310 pp. Hardcover. Bright blue cloth with gilt lettering. Top edge block gilt. near fine condition, fantastic condition for it's age with a small amount of wear on the corners. 

This copy is signed and dated by the author on the dedication page. This book is scarcely seen signed.

It then has an 1898 presentation inscription on the front endpaper from Thomas S. Dewey to Mrs. Jennie E. Dewey, referencing the San Francisco earthquake of March 31, 1898—an early Bay Area quake association that prefigures the famous book that the author wrote about the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 (The Story of The Earthquake and Fire. San Francisco and Vicinity. The Story of the Great Disaster Told by Pen and Picture, by Zeigler - The Murdock Press, San Francisco, 1906). 

A prophetic and uncanny association copy, signed and dated by the author,  with strong San Francisco provenance.

Please see pictures. A remarkable example. Not ex-library. From a smoke free home.

A stellar First edition copy of this foundational Shakespeare conspiracy tome. 

Wilbur Gleason Zeigler (1857–1923) was a lawyer and writer who is best known for founding the Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship in the preface and notes to his 1895 novel It Was Marlowe.

Zeigler returned to literature with his novel It was Marlowe: a Story of the Secret of Three Centuries, (1895). In the preface to the book Zeigler commented on the then-popular Baconian theory that Francis Bacon was the true author Shakespeare's works. He argued that the two authors were very different, and put forward his alternative suggestion that Christopher Marlowe, who is recorded to have been killed in a fight in 1593, faked his death.[4] He pointed out that accounts of the death were very inconsistent and that no evidence had ever been found concerning his mysterious killer. He noted similarities between Marlowe's and Shakespeare's styles and the fact that the latter's career began almost simultaneously with the end of Marlowe's in 1593. 

Marlowe meets a man who tells him an old girlfriend of Marlowe's called Anne is now unhappily married to a violent man called Francis Frazer. Still in love with her, Marlowe tries to visit Anne in secret, but he and Frazer get into a fight in which the latter is killed. Because the two resemble one another there is initial confusion about who has been killed. Marlowe exchanges clothes with Frazer. Helped by a clever lawyer and his friends William Shakespeare and George Peele Marlowe escapes...