London: Cape, 1979

4to, unpaginated. Original illustrated boards, no dustwrapper, as issued. The lightest of bumping to spine ends, otherwise a fine copy.

First edition, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE: 'To ---- fair fortune be yours! Kit Williams'.
The book which launched a nationwide treasure hunt, a literary craze and a lurid scandal. Masquerade is a beautifully illustrated repository of deeply obscure clues to the location of a golden hare which its author Kit Williams had buried somewhere in Britain. Three years after the book was published, the hare was finally unearthed near Ampthill by a man called Ken Thomas. Six years after that 'Ken Thomas' was revealed as a fraud: he was actually Dugald Thompson, and had located the treasure not by solving the book's riddles but by finessing information out of a former girlfriend of Kit Williams. The golden hare itself was sold at Sotheby's in 1988 for £31,900 to an anonymous buyer and then dropped out of sight until 2009, when a BBC documentary briefly reunited Williams with the jewel. It was last seen at the Victoria and Albert museum, where it was displayed as part of the British Design exhibition in 2012.
An all but fine copy of the book's scarce first issue.

Keywords: Kit WILLIAMS"