75
268. [sKiinG] anonymous. russian ski: third Masters tournament. original offset lithograph, linen backed, published by the cccP to promote a russian skiing tournament, Moscow, 1952.
£8,995
269. sKyrinG. skyring’s Builders’ Prices: calculated From the Prime cost of Materials and labour; containing the Metropolitan Buildings act, list of District surveyors and a Variety of new and important information. Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1875.
£110
tall 8vo. original decorative blind-stamped green cloth, gilt-title to the centre of the upper board, endpapers printed with builders’ adverts; pp. [4], builders’ adverts, 169, [1], [60]pp., builders’ adverts; the spine lightly sunned, otherwise a very good copy.
sixty-fifth edition.
270. smitH, Helen Zenna (pseudonym of evadne Price). “not so Quiet...” stepdaughters of War. Albert E. Marriott Limited. 1930. £998
8vo., original publisher’s full dark blue leather, lettered in gilt on spine and upper board. some browning to endpapers, otherwise a near fine copy in card slipcase.
First edition, limited edition of 195 numbered copies printed on hand- made paper, specially bound, and boldly signed by the authoress.
“as a literary figure evadne Price is best-known for her First World War novel Not So Quiet … Stepdaughters of War (1930). her publisher suggested that she should produce a parody of erich remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, with the possible title All Quaint on the Western Front, but on reading remarque’s novel she feared that a frivolous treatment would be considered tasteless. instead, Price’s novel presented itself as a woman’s war memoir of ambulance driving on the western front, drawing on the diary of an ambulance driver, Winifred Young, using a first-person narrator, helen Z. smith, and published under the pseudonym helen Zenna smith. so convincing was the treatment that many readers took it for a factual work, though Price’s own experience of the war seems to have been limited to a stint as a temporary civil servant in the air Ministry.
Perhaps because she was writing fiction, Price allowed herself to depict a war experience much more graphically brutal than that portrayed in most of the better-known memoirs such as Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933) or irene rathbone’s We that were Young (1932). using what Marcus calls a ‘new form of cinematic, dialogic and dramatic interior monologue’ (afterword, 265), Price depicts the physical extremes of exhaustion and filth that dominate the young women’s existence, as well as the fear and tension that accompany each night of driving. especially notable is the women’s bitter rejection of the older civilian generation’s unthinkingly patriotic attitude towards the war, a recurrent theme in much post-war writing by combatants. at the same time Price succeeds in collapsing a conventional trope of much war writing that separates men
and women into front and home respectively. her women definitely belong to the front; they can connect only with each other and their male combatant counterparts; they witness at first hand the wounding and death of each other as well as of the soldiers they drive, and return home as much psychologically destroyed as their combatant brothers and lovers.
reviewing Price’s novel for the evening standard, arnold Bennett wrote, ‘no war book has appalled me more’ the book won the French prix severigne as ‘the novel most calculated to promote international peace’. Four later novels continue the post-war story of helen Z. smith: Women of the Aftermath (1931), Shadow Women (1932), Luxury Ladies (1933), and They Lived with Me (1934).
Price was a prolific writer of popular adult and children’s fiction. as a children’s writer she is best-known for the ten volumes in her Jane turpin series, about a child heroine who has been described as a less successful female counterpart to richmal crompton’s William. in addition to the helen Zenna smith novels, the 1930s saw the publication of most of her Jane books, and novels for adults including Diary of a Red-Haired Girl (1932), Strip Girl! (1934), and Red for Danger (1936). she also wrote plays and screenplays, the film The Phantom Light (1935) being based on her play of the same name (1928), and the film Once a Crook (1941) being based on a play which she co-wrote with Kenneth attiwill.” (oxford DnB).
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