Not Hers Alone [*SIGNED*]

New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1942). First Edition. Hardcover. [no significant wear to book, but the spine is a bit turned; the jacket is bright and attractive, with only light wear to the extremities, would grade a little higher but for some severe fading to the illustrated part of the spine (a continuation of the horizontal image on the front panel, but faded to invisibility)]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper (the inscription itself difficult to read due to some bleeding of the fountain-pen ink over time). Novel that makes rather a big deal (in the jacket blurb) of its "wholesomeness," about a man and woman who are in love with each other "though each is married to someone else." Rather than carry on some sordid affair, however, they "find channels of expression which give them supreme happiness and a realization that nothing can take their love from them -- and with it all [they] do no violence to the joy and peace of those two other persons to whom they owe so much." Another plot thread concerns a young woman (the daughter of the man in the other couple) "with the mind of a talented adult and the restricted emotional experience of the adolescent girl," who "falls in love with an exceptionally brilliant college professor," and together "they essay an experiment before deciding upon the more permanent state of matrimony." (Experiment, eh? Kinda gets you wondering how "wholesome" that might be, but contemporary reviews provide no clues, and I'm not about to read the book to find out. That I will leave to you.) The author, a Pacific Northwest writer whose papers are held by the University of Oregon library, died the year after this novel was published; it was her only full-length work of fiction, although in earlier times she had written a bit of magazine fiction, a number of one-act plays, and some poetry under the name "Ida Elliot." .