MILLIN, Sarah Gertrude. An Artist in the Family. London: Constable. 1928. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s green cloth lettered in black to the spine and upper board, in the fragile dust jacket. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and just slightly rolled. The contents clean and fine but for light spots to textblock edges and milder marks to endpapers. The dust jacket unclipped (6/- net), several shallow chips to spine head and tail, corners, one small nick to centre of spine panel, and some stains, but scarce.
One of the better-known (and best-received) novels by this somewhat problematic Lithuanian-born South African writer. This novel follows the eponymous artist who, sent on the family farm’s hard-earned dime to study Law at Cambridge, is discovered by the family to have instead lived a bum life as vagabond artist scrounging around Europe. The artist returns to Johannesburg with a working-class English wife married out of pity, and her illegitimate son of who knows. Much like her other novels, Millin focuses primarily on the working class experience of South Africans, and in particular women. She was extremely popular in her day, with many novels having numerous printings, while her light-shining work on Jewish women garnered international favour as she rubbed shoulders with US presidents Hoover and Roosevelt, and impressively Winifred Holtby, who visited Millin in South Africa, the pair corresponding for many years thereafter. Yet her politics have tarnished this legacy. Millin supported apartheid politics, subscribing deeply to the notion of biological racism. Nevertheless, her life, surviving an impoverished childhood as a Jewish female, turning down university in direct pursuit of a literary career, becoming a best-selling author, meeting US Presidents, etc. is certainly a remarkable one. A plain dust jacket of the book was also produced, which we have an example of, but this design is evidently much more desirable. Uncommon in dust jacket.
MILLIN, Sarah Gertrude. An Artist in the Family. London: Constable. 1928. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s green cloth lettered in black to the spine and upper board, in the fragile dust jacket. The cloth clean and bright, the binding tight and just slightly rolled. The contents clean and fine but for light spots to textblock edges and milder marks to endpapers. The dust jacket unclipped (6/- net), several shallow chips to spine head and tail, corners, one small nick to centre of spine panel, and some stains, but scarce.
One of the better-known (and best-received) novels by this somewhat problematic Lithuanian-born South African writer. This novel follows the eponymous artist who, sent on the family farm’s hard-earned dime to study Law at Cambridge, is discovered by the family to have instead lived a bum life as vagabond artist scrounging around Europe. The artist returns to Johannesburg with a working-class English wife married out of pity, and her illegitimate son of who knows. Much like her other novels, Millin focuses primarily on the working class experience of South Africans, and in particular women. She was extremely popular in her day, with many novels having numerous printings, while her light-shining work on Jewish women garnered international favour as she rubbed shoulders with US presidents Hoover and Roosevelt, and impressively Winifred Holtby, who visited Millin in South Africa, the pair corresponding for many years thereafter. Yet her politics have tarnished this legacy. Millin supported apartheid politics, subscribing deeply to the notion of biological racism. Nevertheless, her life, surviving an impoverished childhood as a Jewish female, turning down university in direct pursuit of a literary career, becoming a best-selling author, meeting US Presidents, etc. is certainly a remarkable one. A plain dust jacket of the book was also produced, which we have an example of, but this design is evidently much more desirable. Uncommon in dust jacket.
