The Purple Land

Excerpt

This work was first issued in 1885, by Messrs. Sampson Low, in two slim volumes, with the longer, and to most persons, enigmatical title of The Purple Land That England Lost.  A purple land may be found in almost any region of the globe, and ’tis of our gains, not our losses, we keep count.  A few notices of the book appeared in the papers, one or two of the more serious literary journals reviewing it (not favourably) under the heading of “Travels and Geography”; but the reading public cared not to buy, and it very shortly fell into oblivion.  There it might have remained for a further period of nineteen years, or for ever, since the sleep of a book is apt to be of the unawakening kind, had not certain men of letters, who found it on a forgotten heap and liked it in spite of its faults, or because of them, concerned themselves to revive it.