Alas, Poor Lady.. This item is unavailable.Alas, Poor Lady.

FIRST EDITION, pp. 463, crown 8vo, original variant (later issue) binding of red boards, backstrip lettered in black and gently faded with a faint mark towards foot, slight lean to spine, top corners gently knocked, pastedowns faintly spotted, pencilled ownership inscription to flyleaf, good. Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: 'To dear St: John, with love from Rachel. Xmas 1942', adding a note beneath 'N.B. Not a Christmassy choice, but "A Harp in Lowndes Square" is trying to get reprinted & all is paper shortage. P.T.O.' - her note continues to the half-title, in respect of the present book and this particular copy, 'This is one of the later impressions - God knows if the pages are bound up right. I daren't look! R.F.' A cursory inspection suggests her fears were unfounded, though it has inflicted a cheaper binding and a lack of ads at the rear (the first issue contained a publisher's list). The recipient, a pencil note to the pastedown records, was the author St. John Ervine. A tragic tale of Victorian family ideals and their vicissitudes - 'fuelled', Elizabeth Crawford notes in the ODNB, by the author's 'mordant social observation'. The Scrimgeours are a large middle-class family from South Kensington, with seven daughters - the youngest of whom, Grace, emerges in the year of Dickens' death and Marie Lloyd's birth - and a single son (the youngest sibling); four of the sisters fail (in terms of the standards by which they are judged) to marry, and struggle to find any place in the world. A scarce first edition, the title was brought back into print by Persephone Books in 2006, the sole Ferguson title on their list.…