GAYE, Phoebe Fenwick. Vivandière!
GAYE, Phoebe Fenwick. Vivandière! London: Martin Secker. 1929. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s pale green cloth lettered in black to the spine and upper board, in the excellent dust jacket designed by John Austen. A smart example, the cloth clean and bright, the textblock a little dust-marked at top edge, but the binding tight and square. The contents clean with a couple of minor marks only. Publisher’s printed catalogue loosely inserted. The dust jacket priced 7/6 net to the spine, which is darkened and slightly rubbed, with a few short chips around the spine head and tail.
One of the author’s best received novels, which follows a young woman, a vivandière—a dealer in goods and provisions aligned to the military—on her journey with Napoleon’s doomed Russian campaign of 1812. The book is set in three parts; the journey to Russia, in Russia, and the retreat from Russia, and is told consistently through the eyes of the woman; romance ensues. Gaye was a very popular author in her time—this novel was in its third printing by the end of the year. She was an associate of Winifred Holtby, Storm Jameson, Vera Brittain, Naomi Mitchison, and others, but unlike all of these, struggled to dust off a middlebrow reputation. In an excellent tongue-in-cheek poem from 1937, she expresses this frustration:
I’ve written my dozen of novels
I’ve signed autographs by the score
(and my portrait in oils and my photo at Foyles)
And I’ve spoken at Harrods at four;
The money is never a problem
I sell like the proverbial hot cake;
And the libraries fight for each word that I write,
Yet I have this incurable ache: –
Refrain
I wanna be known as a Highbrow.
I want my prestige to go up;
I don’t want romance – I want Mr Gollancz
– And a par. in the dear old Lit. Sup.
To hell with my library public;
To hell with a cheaper edition;
A sentence or two in a weekly review
Remains my unswerving ambition.
OH! –
I wanna turn into a Classic
– I’m as good as the next on the list –
I want some indication, from the Statesman and Nation
That I – as an author – exist.
To hell with the Book of the Month club;
And my serial rights in Cathay –
I wanna be known as a Highbrow
And I don’t care what Hutchinson’s say!
GAYE, Phoebe Fenwick. Vivandière! London: Martin Secker. 1929. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s pale green cloth lettered in black to the spine and upper board, in the excellent dust jacket designed by John Austen. A smart example, the cloth clean and bright, the textblock a little dust-marked at top edge, but the binding tight and square. The contents clean with a couple of minor marks only. Publisher’s printed catalogue loosely inserted. The dust jacket priced 7/6 net to the spine, which is darkened and slightly rubbed, with a few short chips around the spine head and tail.
One of the author’s best received novels, which follows a young woman, a vivandière—a dealer in goods and provisions aligned to the military—on her journey with Napoleon’s doomed Russian campaign of 1812. The book is set in three parts; the journey to Russia, in Russia, and the retreat from Russia, and is told consistently through the eyes of the woman; romance ensues. Gaye was a very popular author in her time—this novel was in its third printing by the end of the year. She was an associate of Winifred Holtby, Storm Jameson, Vera Brittain, Naomi Mitchison, and others, but unlike all of these, struggled to dust off a middlebrow reputation. In an excellent tongue-in-cheek poem from 1937, she expresses this frustration:
I’ve written my dozen of novels
I’ve signed autographs by the score
(and my portrait in oils and my photo at Foyles)
And I’ve spoken at Harrods at four;
The money is never a problem
I sell like the proverbial hot cake;
And the libraries fight for each word that I write,
Yet I have this incurable ache: –
Refrain
I wanna be known as a Highbrow.
I want my prestige to go up;
I don’t want romance – I want Mr Gollancz
– And a par. in the dear old Lit. Sup.
To hell with my library public;
To hell with a cheaper edition;
A sentence or two in a weekly review
Remains my unswerving ambition.
OH! –
I wanna turn into a Classic
– I’m as good as the next on the list –
I want some indication, from the Statesman and Nation
That I – as an author – exist.
To hell with the Book of the Month club;
And my serial rights in Cathay –
I wanna be known as a Highbrow
And I don’t care what Hutchinson’s say!
GAYE, Phoebe Fenwick. Vivandière! London: Martin Secker. 1929. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s pale green cloth lettered in black to the spine and upper board, in the excellent dust jacket designed by John Austen. A smart example, the cloth clean and bright, the textblock a little dust-marked at top edge, but the binding tight and square. The contents clean with a couple of minor marks only. Publisher’s printed catalogue loosely inserted. The dust jacket priced 7/6 net to the spine, which is darkened and slightly rubbed, with a few short chips around the spine head and tail.
One of the author’s best received novels, which follows a young woman, a vivandière—a dealer in goods and provisions aligned to the military—on her journey with Napoleon’s doomed Russian campaign of 1812. The book is set in three parts; the journey to Russia, in Russia, and the retreat from Russia, and is told consistently through the eyes of the woman; romance ensues. Gaye was a very popular author in her time—this novel was in its third printing by the end of the year. She was an associate of Winifred Holtby, Storm Jameson, Vera Brittain, Naomi Mitchison, and others, but unlike all of these, struggled to dust off a middlebrow reputation. In an excellent tongue-in-cheek poem from 1937, she expresses this frustration:
I’ve written my dozen of novels
I’ve signed autographs by the score
(and my portrait in oils and my photo at Foyles)
And I’ve spoken at Harrods at four;
The money is never a problem
I sell like the proverbial hot cake;
And the libraries fight for each word that I write,
Yet I have this incurable ache: –
Refrain
I wanna be known as a Highbrow.
I want my prestige to go up;
I don’t want romance – I want Mr Gollancz
– And a par. in the dear old Lit. Sup.
To hell with my library public;
To hell with a cheaper edition;
A sentence or two in a weekly review
Remains my unswerving ambition.
OH! –
I wanna turn into a Classic
– I’m as good as the next on the list –
I want some indication, from the Statesman and Nation
That I – as an author – exist.
To hell with the Book of the Month club;
And my serial rights in Cathay –
I wanna be known as a Highbrow
And I don’t care what Hutchinson’s say!