first edition Hardcover
(c.1938) · New York
by Owen, Frank
New York: The Macaulay Company. Very Good+ in Very Good- dj. (c.1938). First Edition. Hardcover. [book shows a bit of wear at spine ends and corners, but generally a good solid clean copy; the jacket has a bit of shallow chipping along both the top and bottom edges, with some associated creasing to the upper edge and lower right corner of the front panel; NOTE that the jacket is also split (separated) along the front hinge, but has been provisionally mended with two strips of removable tape, which will not preclude a future professional repair; it is additionally reinforced with a new mylar jacket protector]. A very presentable copy of this scarce bibliotale, which is of great appeal to book aficionados of all stripes, being as it is "a story about some extraordinary book people in Manhattan: authors, booksellers, and a publisher." The plot has to do with a woman whose novel wins a prize, but enlists her young and attractive niece to assume the public role of the glamorous lady novelist, so that she herself can remain incognito while researching her next novel -- which involves working as a salesgirl in a bookstore. The fictional (fictionalized?) store in question is "Stephano's," described as "in the Forties between Fifth Avenue and Sixth"; I'll leave it to those who are well-versed in Manhattan's bookstore history to speculate about which (if any) real-life shop might have provided a model for Stephano's and/or its proprietor, Michael Stephano, described in the jacket blurb as "more interested in books and people than in selling books." (It must also be said that this particular book probably owes its literary afterlife, at least in part, to having had its title appropriated as the name of one of my distinguished bookselling colleagues, a certain firm in New Jersey.) . (Inventory #: 25839)