TITANIC. – Morgan ROBERTSON. Futility. New York: M.F. Mansfield, 1898. First edition, signed and inscribed by Morgan Robertson on a loosely-inserted leaf, 8vo (168 x 96mm.) Half-title. (Toning, marginal damp-stain to text-block.) Original grey pictorial cloth in red, black and silver (fading to spine, minor finger-marking). Note: rare. Morgan Robertson never claimed to have written a prophetic novel, but the similarities between his fictional ship, the S.S. Titan and the real life R.M.S. Titanic, are extraordinary. Written in 1898, Robertson described a huge British-built unsinkable luxury liner that sets sail in the month of April for the North Atlantic where it hits an iceberg, drowning most of the people on board. And, as happened fourteen years later, most of the passengers die because of a lack of lifeboats. After the real Titanic sunk on 15th April 1912, Robertson’s novel was re-issued as ‘Futility: The Wreck of the Titan’. The number of uncanny similarities continues to fascinate. Robertson has inscribed the inserted leaf: ‘With thanks and acknowledgments, I am sincerely yours, Morgan Robertson’.