A Time for Love

New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. (c.1936). Reprint ("Second Edition" stated). Hardcover. [slight fraying to cloth at upper corner of rear cover, otherwise clean and only lightly shelfworn; jacket has some very shallow chipping and a few minor nicks along top and bottom edges, one tiny ragged tear at top of front panel near spine]. Depression-Era novel (the author's first) about a New York magazine editor with an overload of emotional entanglements with the women in his life -- his wife, his mistress (who's also his assistant), his mother, and a daughter. As a contemporary reviewer put it: "Being a conscientious fellow, he therefore tries to play all the roles into which he is thrust -- lover, husband, father and son -- as considerately as possible, and he therefore makes a mess of them all." Despite the somewhat contrived situation, the same critic was highly complimentary of the author's handling of it: "Miss Herdman never descends to any of the banalities, mischievously lurking near, which could have ruined her story; there is no question here of a great love thwarted by the conventions, or of a mistress who is more gallant than is good for her. Miss Herdman is no sentimentalist; still less is she a cynic." Another critic, drawing comparisons with Dawn Powell's "Turn, Magic Wheel," published just a week earlier, praised the author for her psychological insights into her characters, writing that altough Herdman's novel "lacks the mad wit and the crackling insouciance of Miss Powell's book, it is a more convincing revelation of the emotions, the minds and the problems of certain people who move and have their being within the New York literary orbit. It is more convincing because it regards these people as human beings, with human problems." Ramona Herdman (not to be confused with the present-day poet of the same name, although OCLC does exactly that) wrote just three novels -- published right in a row in 1936, 1937, and 1938 -- all of which were well-reviewed, and then for unknown reasons stopped writing. (She remained in the publishing world, however, and during the 1940s and 1950s was reported to be working as a publicity director for Harper & Brothers, a job she had held for several years prior to becoming a novelist herself.) And here's a little bit of trivia I discovered: there is a letter to her in the Patricia Highsmith Papers, held by the Swiss Literary Archives, from Alfred Hitchcock, thanking her for sending him Highsmith's novel "Strangers on a Train" and informing her that he will be "using it as the basis for my next picture.") Alas, like so many worthy authors, she and her work have receded into an undeserved out-of-print obscurity. Here's your chance to begin her rediscovery. .