Sharpe’s Gold double signed with a sketch by Bernard Cornwell first edition 1981

London: Collins, 1981
 
8vo., olive-green boards ruled and lettered in gilt to spine; in the original unclipped illustrated dust jacket (£6.95 net) with an image by Tony Kerins; pp. [viii], 9-250, [ii]; near-fine, lightly pushed to spine ends and with a couple of tiny marks and scratches to the edges of the text block; in similar jacket which is marginally toned (encroaching onto front and rear flaps), lightly sunned along spine; price to front flap crossed through with blue biro; a unique example. 
 
First edition, double signed both by Cornwell and the dust jacket illustrator Tony Kerins to the title page. This copy also comes complete with a sketch by Kerins to the half title, showing a caravan of soldiers and initialled ‘TK’. 
 
Sub-titled ‘Richard Sharpe and the Destruction of Almeida, August 1810’, Sharpe’s Gold is the second historical novel in the Richard Sharpe series of books which began with Sharpe’s Eagle in 1981. Essentially ninth chronologically, the plot follows Richard Sharpe, Captain of the British Army, whose task is to recover from a feared guerrilla leader the gold Wellington so desperately needs. Featuring a fictionalised account of the destruction of Almeida (accounts of which, as Cornwell notes "conveniently for a writer of fiction" remain a mystery), the plot also mentions the military defences of the Lines of Torres Vedras, also a historical reality. Both were visited by the author during his initial research.
 
In 1995 a television adaptation of the same name was produced by ITV, starring Sean Bean in the title role. The plot bore little resemblance to the original novel.
 
I have never seen another example thus signed with a sketch by the illustrator.