Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain (Signed and Inscribed)

First edition, first impression. Signed and inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper. 566pp, with monochrome plate fronispiece. Blue cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to spine. 8vo. Cloth a little pushed at spine ends, very slightly rubbed on extreme corners. Upper text block edge dust marked. Some scattered mild marks on the front free endpaper (possibly signs of removed bookplate?) else internally neat, clean, bright and tight. In its original dust wrapper, a little faded and shelf worn, gently rubbed and bumped on edges, sunned over spine with small paper scar in the centre of the rear panel. A full length biography of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Although of an impeccable English aristocratic heritage, Chamberlain's interest lay in Germany and the German people. His 'Foundations of the Nineteenth Century', published in 1899, became an instant best seller and he went on to become an official proprogandist for the Wagner cult in Bayreuth and one of the most virulent exponents of the racialist view of history and of the German's people's position as a master race. By the early 1920s he had linked with Adolf Hitler, and just before his death in 1927, Hitler and Goebbels are said to have stood by his bedside, crying. This biography addresses, in particular, two main quandaries - how did this apparent English gentleman and amateur philosopher get so swept up in the German master race miasma; and why where his writings, dismissed by the TLS as a the ravings of a renegade, so popular and successful. In doing so, Field also considers whether the racialism, anti-Semitism and ultra-nationalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a uniquely German experience or whether they were endemic across Europe during the age of imperialism.