Three Strange Lovers

New York: The Macaulay Company. Good. (c.1930). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [a sound copy, boards worn at edges and corners, age-toning and light dust-soiling to edges of text block]. A trilogy, more or less, of three tales on sexual themes, by this radical reformer who was well-known within East Coast literary circles as founder and editor of the Baltimore-based radical political and arts journal Modern Quarterly, which was published from its founding in 1923 until Calverton's death in 1940. The Introduction, by Edward J. O'Brien (best known as the creator and longtime editor of the annual "Best American Short Stories" anthologies) notes the approval of Calverton's book, his first work of fiction, by the likes of Sherwood Anderson and Havelock Ellis, and states that the book reveals the author "as a psychologist of distinction and a fine creative artist." He posits Calverton's interest in "the romantic imperialism of sex" as the "principle of unity which justifies the collection of these stories into a book," and describes the three stories thus: "'In [his] first story, 'The Strange Lover,' he studies a case of hunger for perfect sexual satisfaction. In 'Thy Will Be Done,' he studies a case of sexual passion identified with Spinoza's God-hunger. In 'The Return,' he studies a case of sexual imperialism in the case of a mathematician." .