WILLCOCKS, Mary P. The Cup and the Lip. London: Hutchinson. n.d. [1929]. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s red cloth lettered in black to the spine with black borders to boards, in the dust jacket. A very good example, the cloth clean and bright with a few light marks and stains towards board extremities. The binding tight and square, the textblock edges gently spotted. Some spotting to contents, usually sporadic, else clean. The dust jacket priced 7/6 net to the spine, some light marks in places but a bright copy overall. With 24pp ad catalogue to rear.
A sharp example of this later novel by the forgotten author who has been likened to Thomas Hardy and Eden Phillpotts, due largely by proximity; she was a Devon author through and through. She trained as a teacher but after her early novels gained a fairly considerable readership, it allowed her to write full-time. She was homosexual, spending much of her life living with a woman who might well have been her partner, and it might have been her provincial life, away from the hubbub of London’s literati, which explains why her legacy dwindled into obscurity. This particular novel, published when the author had entered an unhappy middle-age, explores spiritualism in the Machen/Rabelais sense—indeed, she was a translator and scholar of Rabelais. There is movement towards republishing her. Scarce. OCLC locates two copies across Britain.
WILLCOCKS, Mary P. The Cup and the Lip. London: Hutchinson. n.d. [1929]. 8vo. First edition. Publisher’s red cloth lettered in black to the spine with black borders to boards, in the dust jacket. A very good example, the cloth clean and bright with a few light marks and stains towards board extremities. The binding tight and square, the textblock edges gently spotted. Some spotting to contents, usually sporadic, else clean. The dust jacket priced 7/6 net to the spine, some light marks in places but a bright copy overall. With 24pp ad catalogue to rear.
A sharp example of this later novel by the forgotten author who has been likened to Thomas Hardy and Eden Phillpotts, due largely by proximity; she was a Devon author through and through. She trained as a teacher but after her early novels gained a fairly considerable readership, it allowed her to write full-time. She was homosexual, spending much of her life living with a woman who might well have been her partner, and it might have been her provincial life, away from the hubbub of London’s literati, which explains why her legacy dwindled into obscurity. This particular novel, published when the author had entered an unhappy middle-age, explores spiritualism in the Machen/Rabelais sense—indeed, she was a translator and scholar of Rabelais. There is movement towards republishing her. Scarce. OCLC locates two copies across Britain.
