AARON'S ROD

1922. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1922. Original blue-grey cloth lettered in gilt, with dust jacket.

First Edition of this novel, published about two months before Secker's UK edition. It is the picaresque tale of Aaron Sisson, a flute-playing coal miner -- who abandons his wife and the mines to try to make a living with his flute. According to the dust jacket, this constitutes the final volume in Lawrence's trilogy beginning with THE RAINBOW and WOMEN IN LOVE. Everyone, even Frieda, hated the book except Seltzer, who had written from America that the book was wonderful. Secker apparently had some difficulty in accepting the manuscript as it was and begged Lawrence to make alterations, which Lawrence refused to do... However, someone, perhaps without Lawrence's knowledge, excised sections [including one about the Royal Family] from the Secker text which remained in the American edition... and which have not been replaced in any English edition of the novel. [Roberts] An example of this is the conversation about the Battenbergs changing their name to Mount Batten, here on page 132. This copy is in dark blue-grey cloth with lettering in gilt (Roberts's variant 2); the other (more common) variant has the lettering in black or dark blue. This volume is just about fine, without wear or soil; the gilt on the spine could be a little brighter, and there is an unusual bookplate on the front paste-down; the $2.00-priced dust jacket, showing the flute, is near-fine (spine slightly darkened, a touch of wear at the top of its spine). Roberts A21. Housed in a handsome morocco-backed clamshell case with red leather label.