Mary, Mary (The Modern Library, No. 30)

New York: Boni and Liveright, Inc. [The Modern Library], 1919. First Thus. Full-Leather. Good/No Jacket. 1919 first thus, Toledano 030.1, binding style 2, olive Brodzky endpapers. Lacks jacket. Front joint rubbed, blank paper mounted on front endpaper, apparent portion of absent jacket mounted on half-title page (includes blurb about author and this work). xiii, 263 pp. Introduction by Padraic Colum. James Stephens was an Irish novelist and poet who "brought a fresh and distinctive element into the new Irish literature, an imaginative exuberance that expresses itself in an extravagance of wit, loveliness, and picturesqueness. His writings reveal a prodigality of humor, intuition, and searching thought - and something else, which is even rarer, a deep sense of democracy, a sense of the spiritual equality of all men and women. 'Mary, Mary' is one of his best and most delightful stories. The scene is the gray-colored, friendly capitol Dublin, with its great gray clouds and its poising sea-birds, with its hills and its bay, with its streets that everyone would avoid, and with its other streets that everyone promenades; with its greens and its park and its river-walks - the always friendly Dublin, as seen through the understanding eyes of James Stephens.