Alas, Poor Lady.

Bookseller Notes

Inscribed by the author on the flyleaf: 'To dear St: John, with love from Rachel. Xmas 1942', adding a note beneath 'N.B. Not a Christmassy choice, but "A Harp in Lowndes Square" is trying to get reprinted & all is paper shortage. P.T.O.' - her note continues to the half-title, in respect of the present book and this particular copy, 'This is one of the later impressions - God knows if the pages are bound up right. I daren't look! R.F.' A cursory inspection suggests her fears were unfounded, though it has inflicted a cheaper binding and a lack of ads at the rear (the first issue contained a publisher's list). The recipient, a pencil note to the pastedown records, was the author St. John Ervine.A tragic tale of Victorian family ideals and their vicissitudes - 'fuelled', Elizabeth Crawford notes in the ODNB, by the author's 'mordant social observation'. The Scrimgeours are a large middle-class family from South Kensington, with seven daughters - the youngest of whom, Grace, emerges in the year of Dickens' death and Marie Lloyd's birth - and a single son (the youngest sibling); four of the sisters fail (in terms of the standards by which they are judged) to marry, and struggle to find any place in the world.A scarce first edition, the title was brought back into print by Persephone Books in 2006, the sole Ferguson title on their list.