Pretty Tales for Tired People

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965 First edition, uncorrected galley proof. Original plain blue three-hole punched paper wrappers, bound by string, with loose trimmed sheets. Very good, with light toning to wrappers and page edges, and a couple of old tape marks to wrappers. Overall, a lovely example of this very scarce pre-publication copy. Pretty Tales for Tired People contains three novellas by Martha Gellhorn: "A Promising Career," "The Clever One," and "The Fall and Rise of Mrs. Hapgood." In the first story a schoolteacher falls for a married woman and loses all in the process, in the second an immigrant lawyer is taken advantage of by a calculating woman, and in the third a middle-aged woman reinvents herself after her husband's infidelity is brought to light. Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) was a famously fearless war correspondent and novelist, who covered six decades of major 20th century conflicts, including the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War. In one of her more daring exploits, she stowed away onto a medical ship and hid in a closet in the days leading up to D-Day in order to get the earliest possible account of the invasion. She was married to Ernest Hemingway from 1940 to 1945. . First Edition. Original Wrappers. Very Good. Galley/Proof.