first edition Hardcover
(c.1942) · Philadelphia
by Glaspell, Susan
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1942). First Edition. Hardcover. [good solid copy, very light shelfwear, fading/browning to edges of endpapers; jacket a bit rubbed/scuffed, moderate edgewear and a few insignificant tears, minor paper loss at top of spine, a couple of white smudges near top of spine, partially obscuring the title, faint red check mark on front flap]. The next-to-last novel by this Iowa-born writer, highly-regarded these days in feminist literary circles, who was a best-selling author during the 1920s, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1931 for her play "Alison's House," was a founding member of the Provincetown Players theatre group, and served as Midwest director for the Federal Theater Project during the Roosevelt Administration. The story here is of a woman who, inspired by a beloved teacher at her small college in South Dakota in the 1890s, attempted to make something serious of her life. Alas, she got herself into a bad marriage instead, with a "young and violent" man with a propensity towards "deals slightly tinged with illegality," and saw "her dreams [begin] to fade before his need for her." The core of the novel deals with her struggle, at the age of 50, following her husband's death, to look back on the course of her life and try to recover something of her youthful idealism and ambitions. . (Inventory #: 16260)