The Life Cry

New York: The Macaulay Company. Good. (c.1933). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [front hinge cracked, modest wear to the extremities, some light staining on the bottom of the text block, and a small dampstain surrounding the base of the spine; basically a reading/reference copy only]. A first-person account of the trials and tribulations of an unwed mother -- or, more precisely, a divorcee who gets knocked up by her lover, then refuses his half-hearted marriage proposal, and subsequently suffers "pain, hunger, want." The publisher's blurb (preceding the title page) lays it on thick, in the best Macaulay house style, extolling motherhood as "the supreme human experience -- nothing more heroic, nothing more harrowing and nothing more rewarding," and then goes on: "Yet, until this remarkable book, the story of a woman's pregnancy in all its dramatic course, with all its climactic psychological development, and its powerful effects on all the other human beings involved, has never been told." But wait, there's more! "Breathlessly you will follow the story of this courageous woman to whom maternity came unsought, and in terror, who faced the world's scorn to bear a fatherless child, who endured the nine months of concealment, masked suffering and pain to emerge into a new human worth and to win a glorious new love consecrated by suffering." And talk about purple prose! -- here's the moment our heroine figures out she's with child, after a couple of months of feeling like crap: "I am puzzled. Then the Moon, Ruler of Woman, forgets to touch me with her carmined scepter. Suddenly I know! I AM PREGNANT!" (I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out that the "Anonymous" narrator was the prolific Jack Woodford.) .