The Lawless Roads.: A Mexican Journey.

London: Longmans, Green and Co.,, 1939. The rare first issue in a strikingly bright jacket First edition, first impression, rare first issue, of Greene's account of the travels that inspired The Power and the Glory (1940). Longmans financed his five month trip to Mexico in 1938, where he compiled notes on the continued persecution of the Catholic Church following the Cristero War (1926-1929). As a Catholic conservative, Greene's report is generally hostile, and he describes his "growing depression, almost pathological hatred... for Mexico". The persecution of the Church was particularly severe in Tabasco, and many of Greene's descriptions of the province appear in The Power and the Glory: from the sound of a revolver to the vultures in the sky. The principal characters of the novel also find antecedents in The Lawless Roads, including his protagonist, the whisky priest, but Douglas Veitch notes that "nowhere in The Power and the Glory is there any indication of the testiness and revulsion recorded in the journal" (p. 4). The spines of later issues were lettered in black, not gilt, and the map endpapers were printed on white paper instead of yellow. Octavo. Original orange cloth, spine lettered in gilt, top edge yellow, map endpapers printed on yellow paper. With dust jacket. Photographic frontispiece and 7 photographic plates, reproduced from photographs taken by the author. Contemporary ownership inscription of one Anthony Jenkinson, Wentworth, on half-title. Spine ends and corners lightly bumped; spine panel lightly toned with tiny chips at head, a few nicks at edges, unclipped: near-fine in like jacket. Brennan 13; Miller 18a. Douglas Veitch, Lawrence, Greene, and Lowry: the Fictional Landscape of Mexico, 1978.