Rumour at Nightfall.  London: William Heinemann, 1931



8vo (7 3/8 x 4 3/4 in.; 197 x 121 mm).  Title-page printed in red and black.  Publisher's red buckram, spine gilt-lettered, blind-stamped design on upper cover.  Original dust-jacket; tear to upper right corner of upper cover skillfull mended, small tear (mended with cellotape) and small nick at bottom margin of lower cover, some light soiling, some wear at extremities.

R. A. Wobbe, author of Graham Greene: A Bibliography and Guide to Research (1979)

Wobbe A4a

8vo (7 3/8 x 4 3/4 in.; 197 x 121 mm). Title-page printed in red and black. Publisher's red buckram, spine gilt-lettered, blind-stamped design on upper cover. Original dust-jacket; tear to upper right corner of upper cover skillfull mended, small tear (mended with cellotape) and small nick at bottom margin of lower cover, some light soiling, some wear at extremities.
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First edition.  A fine copy of Greene's most elusive book, in an impressive example of the scarce dust-jacket.  One of 1200 copies printed.

Rumour at Nightfall was Greene's third novel.  His first novel, The Man Within, was a critical success. His second novel, The Name of Action, and Rumour at Nightfall were, however, artistic and commercial failures, which Greene came to blame largely on the over-bearing influence of Joseph Conrad.  "I knew the truth when I read it.  There was nothing to do but ... start again at the beginning.  Never again, I swore, would I read a novel of Conrad's—a vow I kept for more than a quarter of a century .... I had to begin again naked ..." (Greene, A Sort of Life).

Greene never allowed Rumour at Nightfall to be reprinted after the American edition came out in 1932.  The story, in which an Engli๊sh newspaper correspondent becomes involved with Carlist rebels in Spain, complicated by his love for a beautiful woman, was an early example of Greene introducing Catholicism into his fictional world.