Three Weeks

New York: The Macaulay Company. Very Good+ in Good dj. (c.1907). Later Printing. Hardcover. NOISBN . [solid copy of a cheaply-made book (most copies of which were read to death), with some light wear to cloth at extremities, browning to pages due in part to cheap paper stock; jacket in decent shape, with tiny tears and minor paper loss at most corners, BUT some previous owner of the book took it upon themselves to "reinforce" the jacket with clear tape along all edges and joints]. A somewhat indeterminate edition of La Glyn's scandalous novel, the one that made her reputation in England and was first published in the U.S. in 1907 (the copyright date on this printing). The advertising matter on this dust jacket dates the book as no earlier than 1916: the front flap advertises "Under Fire" by Roi Cooper Megrue, a 1916 novelization of the play of the same name; the rear panel blurb is for "Help Wanted," a 1916 novelization of Jack Lait's 1914 play. (I've seen it suggested that this edition is the "first Theatre edition," but with no supporting documentation of a U.S. theatrical production. (It was adapted for the stage in London in 1908.) There was a 1914 movie version produced by the Reliable Feature Film Corporation, given high praise in a Variety review but otherwise mostly eluding notice from the trade press. (Another Variety critic a decade later, however, reviewing the 1924 Goldwyn remake, referred to the earlier version as "shabbily produced.") Whether the wrap-around jacket photo is from that 1914 film or from an otherwise undocumented American stage production, however, is still open to speculation -- not helped by the fact that the leads in the film (Mahlon Hamilton, Madeline Traverse and Pauline Seymour) are sufficiently obscure that they can't be definitively confirmed as the actors who are pictured on this jacket. (Admittedly the photo illustration looks more "stagey" than film-like -- but then again, in 1914 so did many feature films!) .