Kept Woman

New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. (c.1929). Reprint. Hardcover. [a nice clean copy, very slight deterioriation to cloth at spine ends, no other significant wear; the jacket shows just a bit of wear at the spine ends, with a couple of diagonal crease lines at the bottom right corner of the front panel]. In the same vein as the author's earlier books "Bad Girl" and "Loose Ladies," and sharing similarly striking Arthur Hawkins Jr. jacket designs, this novel tells the story of "a lily of the field . . . the gin-buying, car-owning lady of leisure, a middle-class kept woman, who buys perfume at a dollar an ounce and feels as grand as an international adventuress who wangles a floating palace from her lover." These three novels were a collective sensation, not only making Delmar's reputation but also propelling her into a long and lucrative career supplying story material to Hollywood, in the form of plays, novels and original stories. (She only had a handful of actual screenwriting credits, but one of them was a doozy: the 1937 screwball comedy THE AWFUL TRUTH, directed by Leo McCarey and starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.) A sharp-looking copy, albeit a G&D reprint -- but a comparable first edition (with identical jacket art) would cost you at least three times as much. (Am I suggesting that you should "settle"? Yes, I am.) (It's worth noting, however, that although this version of the dust jacket eliminates Hawkins's signature, for unknown reasons.) .