A Woman's Woman

New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Good in Fair dj. 1919. Reprint. Hardcover. [a good sound copy with intact binding, some soiling to edges of text block and offsetting to endpapers; the jacket is pretty rough, with small tears and bits of paper loss at all extremities, split and nearly separated along front hinge, spine panel mottled and soiled, etc.]. Novel about a 35-year-old married mother of two who decides to liberate herself from the drudgery of her domestic life: "Little by little she emerges from her home-keeping shell and joins one woman's club after another. She is sent as [a] delegate to conventions, starts a woman's exchange and finally becomes one of the most prominent women in the country." All this, however, does not come without a price, and in the end, as the Chicago Tribune reviewer complained, "the reader is expected to rejoice as the spirited heroine, for love's sake, resumes the making of fish balls and the washing of dishes." The author was prominent (and prolific) enough to earn herself a brief entry in the 1928 survey "The Women Who Make Our Novels," wherein this particular book was adjuged "her most substantial piece of work." (We are further informed that she "became a newspaper reporter at nineteen and served a pretty arduous apprenticeship in the more cheaply priced fiction magazines.") So despite its title (which the same reviewer suggested should have been "A Man's Woman"), and despite its heroine's notable self-emanicipation, this can hardly be considered a work of feminist literature -- which is perhaps one reason why Ms. Bartley has faded into obscurity, despite having turned out a couple of dozen novels over the course of her writing life. .