HERBERT, Alan Patrick. Holy Deadlock
HERBERT, Alan Patrick. Holy Deadlock. London: Methuen. 1934. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s cherry cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the striking dust jacket designed by ‘EF’. An about fine copy, the cloth clean, the backstrip a trifle faded, the binding tight and very slightly rolled. A few spots and mild offsetting to endpapers, else fine. The dust jacket priced at 7/6 net to spine, Book Society/Book Guild sticker to corner as is usual with this volume, a couple of spots and mild rubbing around the top edges, but a very smart and pleasing example overall.
A novel based upon the popular idiom, ‘seven year itch’—originally attributed to Henry David Thoreau and made famous, of course, by the 1955 film of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell—in which a seemingly happily-married couple encounter trouble after seven years. The novel, which mocked the absurdity that divorce required physical evidence of adultery, was at the heart of the movement towards the 1937 divorce laws, Herbert calling it ‘a relief from misfortune, not a crime’. A superior example.
HERBERT, Alan Patrick. Holy Deadlock. London: Methuen. 1934. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s cherry cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the striking dust jacket designed by ‘EF’. An about fine copy, the cloth clean, the backstrip a trifle faded, the binding tight and very slightly rolled. A few spots and mild offsetting to endpapers, else fine. The dust jacket priced at 7/6 net to spine, Book Society/Book Guild sticker to corner as is usual with this volume, a couple of spots and mild rubbing around the top edges, but a very smart and pleasing example overall.
A novel based upon the popular idiom, ‘seven year itch’—originally attributed to Henry David Thoreau and made famous, of course, by the 1955 film of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell—in which a seemingly happily-married couple encounter trouble after seven years. The novel, which mocked the absurdity that divorce required physical evidence of adultery, was at the heart of the movement towards the 1937 divorce laws, Herbert calling it ‘a relief from misfortune, not a crime’. A superior example.
HERBERT, Alan Patrick. Holy Deadlock. London: Methuen. 1934. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s cherry cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the striking dust jacket designed by ‘EF’. An about fine copy, the cloth clean, the backstrip a trifle faded, the binding tight and very slightly rolled. A few spots and mild offsetting to endpapers, else fine. The dust jacket priced at 7/6 net to spine, Book Society/Book Guild sticker to corner as is usual with this volume, a couple of spots and mild rubbing around the top edges, but a very smart and pleasing example overall.
A novel based upon the popular idiom, ‘seven year itch’—originally attributed to Henry David Thoreau and made famous, of course, by the 1955 film of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell—in which a seemingly happily-married couple encounter trouble after seven years. The novel, which mocked the absurdity that divorce required physical evidence of adultery, was at the heart of the movement towards the 1937 divorce laws, Herbert calling it ‘a relief from misfortune, not a crime’. A superior example.