Better Left Unsaid

New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.. Near Fine in Very Good dj. 1931. 10th printing. Hardcover. [good solid copy, slight bumping to corners of rear cover, internally very clean; the foil jacket is edge- and surface-worn but largely intact]. (B&W photographs, facsimiles) "Women will love this book," claims the jacket blurb (written by some man, no doubt). "It is an unerringly true picture of the personal life of this charming Irish-English woman of the nobility, who married a Prussian Prince and was compelled to live a life which was diametrically opposite to the dreams of her girlhood. Married to a man who never came to know her, living among strangers, bearing children who would grow up among alien traditions....." (Let's just stop right there, to contemplate again why "women will love this book," shall we?) This was the second memoir by this Welsh-born Edwardian society dame (born Mary Theresa Cornwallis-West), a member of the House of Hochberg, a wealthy Silesian royal family (Silesia is now part of Poland), who would go on to write a third (because life was just so full, y'know, for this "Princess in a sad fairy story"). Like its predecessor, it consists largely of reproduced entries from her diaries, in this case covering 1895 through 1914, with an additional chapter tacked on that sort of rushes through the postwar years, up to about 1924. (She had covered 1914-1918 in her previous book; to quote the jacket blurb again, this one "deals almost exclusively with her personal life, in contrast t the earlier book which touched more fully on politics and personalities.") As befits the nonstop name-dropping throughout, the index runs 38 double-columned pages. But to be fair (and despite my snarkiness), I guess maybe women did love it: this was already the tenth printing, only two months after its publication in the U.S. (It had previously been issued in England under the title "From My Private Diary.") ****NOTE that additional postage charges will be assessed for international shipping of this heavy book; if this concerns you, please contact us for a shipping quote before placing your order. As always at ReadInk, domestic Media Mail shipping is free.**** .