First edition of Wells's parody of Sinclair Lewis's MAIN STREET, the story of a girl who moves to a small town of aesthetes and intellectuals.
Fine in very good plus jacket.
Price: $400.00
"That was the way things came to Warble: a hit—a social success—and all because she forgot to put on her frock."
Wells was remarkably prolific, most productive as a mystery novelist and writer for children but also a poet and the author of several "burlesque" comic novels. James Hutchisson singles PTOMAINE STREET out as the "most amusing" of the several contemporary efforts to satirize Lewis's bestseller.
Wells's digs at flapper fashion and the attendant birth of the 20th-century diet industry are also of continuing interest: orphan-waitress Warble Petticoat's sophisticated husband admonishes her to "be more careful about eating in public. It isn't done." So are poor Warble's fears of Interpretive Dancers, Art Collectors, and the Restless Sexteen, the upper echelon of small-town female society devoted to "certain exercises, uncertain drugs," and the "higher psychology and broader psychopathy."
An uncommonly attractive copy in the scarce dust jacket.
Read more: Barry, The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells; Hutchisson, Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920-1930.
First printing. Philadelphia and London: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1921. 7.5'' x 5''. Original orange-lettered green boards. In original unclipped ($1.25) dust jacket. 124, [2] pages. Bookplate to front free endpaper. Light edgewear, minor soil to jacket.
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