Saltus, Edgar. The Imperial Orgy: An Account of the Tsars from the First to the Last [signed, with ALS]

Saltus, Edgar. The Imperial Orgy: An Account of the Tsars from the First to the Last [signed, with ALS]. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1920. First Edition.

Inscribed on the half title: "For a backshelf of the library of Col. Hughes. Edgar Saltus, Nearly Xmas 1920." Possibly Rupert Hughes, novelist, US Army officer, and brother of Howard Hughes.

With an ALS tipped in on the ffep, Saltus' stationary marked 109 East Eighteenth Street, written to a Mr. Walker of Irvington and informing him of travel plans to visit him and suggesting an article for Men and Events on "the great adventurers - Psalmanazar, Casanova, Lauzun Law, etc."

Blue cloth, somewhat faded with dull spine, 5 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches, dark green end papers, 233 clean and unmarked pp., tight, illustrated. Good. Hardcover.  [4121] 

Edgar Evertson Saltus, (1855-1921, b. & d. at New York City), "one of the few U.S. novelists who adopted the sophisticated cynicism, art-for-art’s-sake credo, and other mannerisms of the European school of Decadents. In his time his novels were popular for their wit and for their shocking, erotic incidents.

"Educated at Yale and abroad, Saltus took a law degree at Columbia College in 1880 but never practiced. He wrote popularized histories of the Roman emperors, Imperial Purple (1893), and of the Russian tsars, Imperial Orgy (1920). In addition he wrote books on Balzac and Schopenhauer and The Anatomy of Negation (1886), a study of antitheistic philosophies from earliest times." - Amy Tikkanen, Encyclopedia Britannica.