The Purple East.

The rare large paper first edition of this eighteen-nineties title, by a prolific poet of the era. Watson was a proud Imperialist, but disapproved strongly of the profit-driven exploitation of resources and peoples of the nations that Britain's Empire then encompassed. This particular work, mostly written between 1895 & 1896, contains 'a number of sonnets...in which Watson attacked the brutal, heathen savagery of the Sultan of Turkey and the apparent apathy and moral decay of England. News of the Turkish Sultan's indulgence in one of his favourite sports, the massacre of minorities within his greatly reduced empire, had reached England in July, 1894.' (James G. Nelson, Sir William Watson, 1966).