SIDE SHOWS

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne: Cassell and Company, 1923. Octavo, original olive green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black. First edition. A collection of six short stories. Published later in the U.S. as THE MAD BUSMAN AND OTHER STORIES (1926), with different contents (four of the present stories were reprinted, two dropped, and four new stories added). The two stories unique to the present collection are "The Inheritors" and "Lord Bolshevik and Lady Circumstance," the latter a biting satire against what might now be called limousine liberals. Wylie lived a colorful life, born in Australia, growing up in England (without a mother or much supervision, teaching herself from her father's library), traveling freely in Europe -- as a child! -- studying in Belgium and Germany, and finally moving to America after World War I. She began writing, and publishing, stories when she was a teenager, and became a militant suffragette in the 1910s. Owner's inked signature on front paste-down. Spine lean, cloth rubbed at edges, endpapers foxed, a sound, good copy. (#117428) (Inventory #: 117428)