Bachelors Anonymous

186 pages. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 1/2") issued in sea blue with silver lettering to spine in a pictorial silver cover and a pictorial dust jacket on white background. 16,000 copies printed. (APG: Wodehouse, 113b) First American edition.

In Hollywood there is a little circle whose members have decided that the celibate life is best. They call themselves Bachelors Anonymous. Their methods are frankly borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous. When one of them feels the urge to take a woman out, he seeks out the other members of the circle and tells them of his cravings, and they reason with him. He pleads that one dinner cannot do him any harm, but they know what that one dinner can lead to. They point out the inevitable results of that first downward step. Once yield to temptation, and it is inevitable that one will soon stand cowering beside one's bride at the altar rail, racked with regret and remorse when it is too late. So when Ivor Llewellyn, a five-time loser in matrimony and the softest of targets for a female dinner companion, sets off to London, and his firends at Bachelors Anonymous realize that they have no London branch, they feel they have to Take Steps. They send a personal emissary, Ephraim Trout, lawyer and mentor of the reckless Llewelly, charged with the holy mission of staving off diaster. Well, in any Wodehouse novel love is forever burgeoning, and much more than Ivor Llewellyn's romances spring up all around the place. For example, some terribly startling things happen to playwright Joe Picerking, who is helplessly in love with Sally Fitch, the prettiest journalist in London, and, for that matter, Ephraim Trout runs into his Waterloo in a most surprising manner.

Condition:

Head page ends lightly soiled, remainder mark at heal end pages. Dust jacket price clipped. A better than very good copy in a near fine dust jacket.