CARLISLE, Helen Grace. See How They Run. New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith. 1929. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s purple cloth lettered in green to the spine, with Caope’s blindstamped motif to front board. In the dust jacket which, though uncredited, is almost certainly by Arthur Hawkins Jr. A very good copy. The cloth clean and bright, the titles a trifle dulled. The binding tight and gently rolled, the contents clean and fine throughout without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket unclipped ($2.50), with several small nicks, chips and creases to most corners and tips, but still quite vibrant overall.
The author’s debut novel. ‘Three blind mice’ are the eponymous runners, three young girls from Chicago who eschew the married lives their parents prescribe, and instead venture from suburbia to New York City, their individual hopes synergised by a new meaning. Their respective experiences and the men who inform them leave them mostly baffled. Perhaps most interesting is its style—Carlisle writes ‘in the swift, staccato manner of the modern writers’, i.e. modernist, a stream of consciousness narrative that drifts between the three girls without notice or comma, the dialogue never attributed, all executed in an accomplished manner. The front flap advertises another modernist work, Evelyn Scott’s The Wave which was published in the same list by the brief but mighty publishers.
CARLISLE, Helen Grace. See How They Run. New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith. 1929. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s purple cloth lettered in green to the spine, with Caope’s blindstamped motif to front board. In the dust jacket which, though uncredited, is almost certainly by Arthur Hawkins Jr. A very good copy. The cloth clean and bright, the titles a trifle dulled. The binding tight and gently rolled, the contents clean and fine throughout without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket unclipped ($2.50), with several small nicks, chips and creases to most corners and tips, but still quite vibrant overall.
The author’s debut novel. ‘Three blind mice’ are the eponymous runners, three young girls from Chicago who eschew the married lives their parents prescribe, and instead venture from suburbia to New York City, their individual hopes synergised by a new meaning. Their respective experiences and the men who inform them leave them mostly baffled. Perhaps most interesting is its style—Carlisle writes ‘in the swift, staccato manner of the modern writers’, i.e. modernist, a stream of consciousness narrative that drifts between the three girls without notice or comma, the dialogue never attributed, all executed in an accomplished manner. The front flap advertises another modernist work, Evelyn Scott’s The Wave which was published in the same list by the brief but mighty publishers.
