Hell! Said the Duchess: A Bedtime Story

Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc, 1934. First American edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good Minus. 241pp. Duodecimo [19.5 cm] Black cloth over boards, with a gilt stamped title and embossed diamond patterns on the spine, and a gilt stamped crown design on the front cover. Publisher's red topstain. Spine slanted. Literary bookplate on the front pastedown. In the dust jacket, with a number of small closed and open tears along the edges and folds, surface rubbing, and toning to the rear panel and inside flaps. Overall, the jacket is quite good. From the collection of Berkeley book collector and letterpress printer John Ruyle. Hubin, p. 12. Bleiler Checklist, p. 10 (London edition). A satirical novel, taking place in the near future (1938), in which a female killer (the Duchess aka Jane the Ripper) is linked to a series of gruesome killings in London.