SPENCER, Claire. Gallows' Orchard. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith. 1930. 8vo. First American edition. Publisher’s quarter black cloth over red boards, lettered in gilt to the spine, in the exceptional art deco dust jacket expertly designed by the author. A fine copy, the cloth gently marked at the boards, the tips gently pushed, the binding tight and square, the contents fine without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket unclipped ($2.50), with a few very tiny nicks, but fine overall. A very bright and pleasing copy.
An excellent example of Spencer’s debut novel, what the New York Times called ‘a strange, glamorous tale of rural Scotland which has an atmosphere all its own’, about Effie Gallows, a young woman with a tremendous temper, adored, mystified, and later vilified by the inhabitants of a tiny village where all are born will die. This American edition, published in April and probably only a few months before the UK edition, was chosen as a Book of the Month Club—which gave Spencer a sensational early literary start—while Time compared her to Thomas Hardy and Robert Louis Stevenson. Spencer moved from rural Scotland to New York aged 19 to pursue an art career, and was trusted to design her own dust jacket for her debut novel—due in dual parts to her marriage to the publisher, Harrison Smith, and in her remarkable albeit fleeting design ability, the jacket one of the most famous art deco covers. Two other novels followed—The Island, and The Quick and the Dead, the latter ‘touching a depth of disgust that is almost a spiritual nausea’, but fell into obscurity as per many modernist female authors. Though not an especially scarce book, fine copies are uncommon.
SPENCER, Claire. Gallows' Orchard. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith. 1930. 8vo. First American edition. Publisher’s quarter black cloth over red boards, lettered in gilt to the spine, in the exceptional art deco dust jacket expertly designed by the author. A fine copy, the cloth gently marked at the boards, the tips gently pushed, the binding tight and square, the contents fine without stamps or inscriptions. The dust jacket unclipped ($2.50), with a few very tiny nicks, but fine overall. A very bright and pleasing copy.
An excellent example of Spencer’s debut novel, what the New York Times called ‘a strange, glamorous tale of rural Scotland which has an atmosphere all its own’, about Effie Gallows, a young woman with a tremendous temper, adored, mystified, and later vilified by the inhabitants of a tiny village where all are born will die. This American edition, published in April and probably only a few months before the UK edition, was chosen as a Book of the Month Club—which gave Spencer a sensational early literary start—while Time compared her to Thomas Hardy and Robert Louis Stevenson. Spencer moved from rural Scotland to New York aged 19 to pursue an art career, and was trusted to design her own dust jacket for her debut novel—due in dual parts to her marriage to the publisher, Harrison Smith, and in her remarkable albeit fleeting design ability, the jacket one of the most famous art deco covers. Two other novels followed—The Island, and The Quick and the Dead, the latter ‘touching a depth of disgust that is almost a spiritual nausea’, but fell into obscurity as per many modernist female authors. Though not an especially scarce book, fine copies are uncommon.
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