The Ladies

New York/Chicago: A.L. Burt Company. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1933). Reprint. Hardcover. [slight bump to upper front corner, otherwise a nice copy with only minor shelfwear; the jacket is modestly edgeworn and lightly scuffed, with a small chip at the top of the spine and slight fading to the spine panel] The titular characters in this proto-feminist novel (author Stanley Hopkins being a woman, by the way) are five sisters and their various fortunes (or misfortunes) in marriage. The book (Mrs. Hopkins's first) was quite well-reviewed upon its original publication by Harper & Brothers, so much so that the designers of the jacket for this (truncated) early reprint chose to splash them all over the front panel and even the spine. One example, from the Philadelphia Record: "A piece of masterful portraiture which stands on its own feet -- it simply must be read. Mrs. Hopkins deals with commonplace, unepisodic lives, yet with them she runs the entire gamut of human emotions. And the beauty of her prose alone would make [the book] worth reading and re-reading." (The book also garnered praise from no less a personage than Sinclair Lewis, who is quoted on the front jacket flap.) As nearly as I can determine, the author wrote just one more novel ("Sixth of June," published in 1935); she should not be confused with "Stanley Hopkins, Jr.", a pseudonym under which Blythe Morley (b.1923), daughter of novelist Christopher Morley, wrote several mystery novels in the 1940s. . (Inventory #: 27085)