FOR WHAT?
Association first edition of Cartland's fourth novel — and one of only a handful of her 728 published books without a happy ending — inscribed by the Cartland to her uncle.
Very good.
Price: $1,000.00
FOR WHAT?
Barbara Cartland was one of the most successful authors in the history of the novel in English, with a career spanning seven decades, over 700 books, and more than one billion copies sold. Cartland's influence across romance is tremendous and multifaceted, not only in contemporaries but also historicals (where she herself was heavily indebted to Heyer and, at one point, quietly settled a plagiarism complaint brought by Heyer). Cartland was a flamboyant performer, the Liberace of romance. Interviews with her never fail to entertain, showing off a personality equally charismatic and eccentric. Every opinion she held was a strong one, and most of those opinions were contrary: she basked in her opposition to second wave feminism, and stuck proudly to her virginal heroines long after they had fallen out of style. Cartland also had many fears and anxieties that played out in bizarre ways in her life, such as her extreme health treatments — but what is so exceptional about her work as a woman writer, and especially as a woman writer of romance, is how fearless she was about disregarding what other people thought of her. It was this bone-deep confidence that is reflected in her endless bon mots and strict pronouncements, issued while reigning in some velvet-lined chaise in any number of her preferred chiffon-bomb pastel dresses.
FOR WHAT? is exceptionally unusual in the vastness of Cartland's oeuvre because it is not, in fact, a romance. The young heroine marries "an almost painfully silent Scottish laird" without first falling in love, then falls for another man entirely while pregnant. Cartland has remarked that examples of unhappy marriages seeped into her 1930s work because of her own experience: "I had been through all that myself" (quoted in Pearson). She and her first husband, a Scottish with an immense fortune named Alexander McCorquodale, divorced in 1933, three years after this book's publication. Any first editions of Cartland's early books are scarce, and even rarer signed: especially so association copies.
Read more: Pearson, Barbara Cartland: Crusader in Pink.
The Object
London: Hutchinson & Co, (1930). 7.25'' x 4.75''. Original orange cloth lettered in black. Lacking original dust jacket. Publisher's catalogue dated Autumn 1930 at rear. 286, [2], 32 pages. Inscribed by Cartland on front free endpaper: "Uncle Willie' / with love / from / Barbara" [Cartland's uncle was William Hall Walker, Baron Wavertree, known in the family as Willie]. Toning to spine and edges of boards, a few light stains to front board. Interior neat and clean.
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