"The First Man in Rome" by Colleen McCullough, published by William Morrow & Co, New York, 1990. First Edition, 1st Printing; illustrated with maps.

Original dust jacket with un-clipped '$22.95' on the front flap [a little wear]; hard boards, red cloth spine, gold lettering; 6.1/4" x 9.1/2"; the endpapers are maps, 896 pages, illustrated with maps and drawings, very good/ fine condition.

The First Man in Rome is a 1990 historical novel by Australian author Colleen McCullough, and the first in her Masters of Rome series.

"With extraordinary narrative power, New York Times bestselling author Colleen McCullough sweeps the reader into a whirlpool of pageantry and passion, bringing to vivid life the most glorious epoch in human history."

"When the world cowered before the legions of Rome, two extraordinary men dreamed of personal glory: the military genius and wealthy rural "upstart" Marius, and Sulla, penniless and debauched but of aristocratic birth. Men of exceptional vision, courage, cunning, and ruthless ambition, separately they faced the insurmountable opposition of powerful, vindictive foes. Yet allied they could answer the treachery of rivals, lovers, enemy generals, and senatorial vipers with intricate and merciless machinations of their own to achieve in the end a bloody and splendid foretold destiny . . . and win the most coveted honor the Republic could bestow."

Colleen Margaretta McCullough AO [1937-2015] was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being "The Thorn Birds" and "The Ladies of Missalonghi".

Following "The Thorn Birds", McCullough wrote her magnum opus: seven novels on the life and times of Julius Caesar, each a colossus weighing in at up to 1,000 pages. "The Masters of Rome" series preoccupied her for almost 30 years, from the early 1980s to the publication of the final volume in 2007. The research was a monumental task: a library of several thousand books and monographs on every aspect of Roman history and civilization accumulated on the shelves of her home. She drew maps of cities and battlefields, scoured the world’s museums for busts and inscriptions, consulted experts in a dozen universities and recorded every known fact about her subject and his times.

US: Priority (c.2-4 days) ---------- $12.50
Canada: Priority (c.2-6 weeks) ---- $32.50
World: Priority (c.2-8 weeks) ----- $48.50