Big Business

Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Near Fine in Very Good dj. 1932. First American Edition. Hardcover. [nice clean book with just a trace of shelfwear, old bookseller's faint rubber-stamped name on rear pastedown (Jones Stationery & Gifts, Santa Maria, Calif.); jacket edgeworn and lightly soiled, with some shallow chipping along top and bottom edges]. (cartoon drawings) "A rollicking, joyous venture into the realms of get-rich-quick -- sometime to do with a will and a disappointed heir -- and the trouble [that] is precipitated by the fate of seven fat pug dogs." It's the sort of novel where characters have names like Saxon Springe, Boy Bond, and Sebastian Pringle, and law firms are called "Hyde and Seek," "Weal and Woe," and so on. Several of this British author's more "serious" novels -- in particular "If Winter Comes" (1922) and "One Increasing Purpose" (1925) -- were best-sellers in the U.S. (and those two were also both made into movies), but this one was blurbed as a "return to the manner" of his very first published novel, "Once Aboard the Lugger," which had been published way back in 1908, before he had gotten quite so serious. In addition to his numerous novels and short stories, Hutchinson was also editor of the London illustrated newspaper, The Daily Graphic. .