After working on the Gazetteer of India in the early 1880s, Grant Allen turned his attention to fiction, publishing more than thirty books between 1884 and 1899. In 1895, his scandalous work The Woman Who Did and it sometimes startling views on marriage became a bestseller, but for many he is best remembered for his forays into detective and crime fiction, and particular for his creation of two early female detectives, Hilda Wade and Miss Cayley. He also wrote two novels under female pseudonyms, including the short novel The Type-writer Girl, as Olive Pratt Rayner.

First edition; 8vo; frontispiece and vignette illustrations by Gordon Browne, stain to p.81, some splitting at gatherings, but overall internally very good; publisher's dark blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, front decoratively stamped in gilt, top edge gilt, some minor rolling and rubbing to spine, light rubbing, overall very good.