Money for Love

New York: Coward-McCann, Inc.. Near Fine in Very Good dj. 1929. First Edition. Hardcover. [tight clean copy, just a touch of wear at top of spine, slight bumping to base of spine; jacket shows some minor creasing along the bottom edge, with a few tiny tears and nicks]. The radical/socialist journalist-novelist's second book, about a young actress "whose existence on the stage has been complicated by her emotional life"; convinced that having money (which she doesn't) will allow her to achieve happiness, she sets out to get some -- by blackmailing a former lover. Much scarcer than her debut novel, "Nothing is Sacred" (published the previous year), no doubt due to its poor critical reception: it was generally regarded as having fallen far too heavily under the influence of what was already being criticized as "the Hemingway school" of direct, stripped-down prose. (The New York Times reviewer remarked on her "practiced colorless prose, without overtones," and complained that she "has nothing of Hemingway's raciness or bite." Even Herbst herself was quoted in print a couple of years later, claiming that she "never liked the book, do not like it now, and have always considered it pinched.") If her biographer, Elinor Langer, is to be believed, the novel sold "little more than a hundred copies," which undoubtedly scotched the idea of any subsequent printings. Its relative scarcity is demonstrated by an OCLC search, revealing that the original edition is held by 40 libraries worldwide, only one-third of the number that have "Nothing is Sacred." .