The Establishment of Madame Antonia

New York: The Macaulay Company. Good in Good dj. (c.1932). Reprint? (see note). Hardcover. [Good only, book is worn and moderately soiled at page edges, both hinges weak (rear due to removed endpaper); jacket worn at edges and corners, quarter-sized chip at top rear hinge (taking part of the title with it), soiling and scuffing to rear panel]. The story of a brothel in Northern Germany, where "fashionable women came to sight-see and sip champagne [and] fashionable men were frequent callers." The book is structured as a series of chapter-vignettes about each of the nine women who work there (this being the joint's m.o.: "There were only nine girls, never more, and all of them beautiful, all of them from different countries"). You've got Natachia (Russian), Esther (from Palestine), Hahlihla (from Morocco), Frankie ("the vivacious American girl"), Fatima (Arab father/Syrian mother), Paulette (French), Lotte (German, "whose bourgeois appearance was contradicted by her store of strange desires and sadistic impulses"), Raquel (Spanish) -- and "the newcomer, the shy, delicate-featured girl from Budapest who was to cause a strange turmoil in the house of Madame Antonia." The author was an actress and occasional playwright, who appeared in the original Broadway production (1924) of "What Price Glory?," as Charmaine (the role played in the famous silent film by Renee Adoree) [The reason I state the edition as "Reprint?" is that the book appears to have been published by Liveright in 1932; there's no indication on this Macaulay edition of any prior printing, but then again Macaulay was a little slipshod about such matters. It's worth noting, however, that several of the books advertised on the rear jacket panel were, in fact, 1933 publications.] .