Lummox

New York: Harper & Brothers. Near Fine. 1923. Early printing. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [a good solid copy, gilt lettering on spine and front cover still bright some rubbing to gilt lettering on front cover and spine]. Hurst's second novel, about the miserable life of a homely and inarticulate servant-girl working in a sailors' boarding-house, was her breakthrough success as a novelist, although she had been well-known for her short fiction (several of which had already been adapted for the movies) since the mid-1910s. Published in October 1923, it quickly went into additional printings (the L-X code in this copy dates it as November 1923); a critic of the time commented that "it is not too much to say that the heroine of [the novel] belongs with the great creations of fiction." A talkie version of the book was released by United Artists in 1930, directed by Herbert Brenon and starring Winifred Westover in the title role. Westover, best remembered (if remembered at all) as the one-time wife of erstwhile Western film hero William S. Hart, essentially came out of retirement to make this film (she had not appeared onscreen since 1922, reportedly a condition of her divorce from Hart), and then promptly re-retired. .