LONDON, Jack "The Iron Heel" [The Regent Press, 1913]

LONDON, Jack. The Iron Heel.

New York: The Regent Press, 1913. Early reprint edition. 7.5" x 5.25", xiv + 354pp. Blue cloth stamped in yellow and red with ornamental device to upper board, yellow lettering to spine and front board; publisher’s imprint at foot of spine. Half-title and title pages present. Light scuffing to spine face and front board. Moderately foxed. Binding tight. Very Good.

The Iron Heel is widely recognized as one of the earliest modern dystopian novels, predating both H. G. Wells’s later social dystopias and the major 20th-century classics of the genre. London’s depiction of an entrenched oligarchy crushing democratic movements introduced a political dystopia rooted not in fantasy but in plausible economic and social structures. Its influence can be traced through later works by Orwell, Huxley, and Sinclair Lewis, all of whom echoed London’s warning about authoritarian power rising from within industrial society.