It's Different for a Woman [*SIGNED*]

New York: Random House. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. (c.1952). First Edition. Hardcover. [spine slightly turned, a bit of wear to book extremities; the jacket shows some wear at edges and corners, minor creasing along top edge of rear panel]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the ffep, with a somewhat whimsical inscription: "For Mary Jane R. / with love / Mary Jane W." You thought "The Snake Pit," the author's semi-autobiographical 1946 best-seller giving a patient's-eye view of a psychiatric hospital, was harrowing? Well, brace yourself for this horrifying tale of a fortyish housewife's navigation of the perils of domestic life in the suburbs. Oh, I know, the jacket design/blurb try to soft-pedal it as a "gay and true-to-life story" of an Everywoman coping with certain garden-variety problems like "a handful of in-laws, two children in love and a husband with a roving eye," but don't be fooled! Why, just in the opening pages we find poor Sally worrying over such diverse topics as her failing eyesight, a suspected throat cancer, and the difficulty of finding good watercress -- and, at the urging of her good friend Patricia, considering undergoing a hysterectomy (euphemistically called the "North Shore Operation") in order to maintain her youthful appearance! OK, well, I'm being a little facetious here -- Mary Jane Ward was no Shirley Jackson -- but still, I don't quite trust the cheery packaging, especially given the author's known history of mental illness (she was hospitalized for psychiatric issues three more times, post-"Snake Pit") prior to her death in 1981. (It's also worth noting, perhaps, that following this book it was 17 years before she published another novel.) Signed by Author .