When on Charing Cross Road
SMART, Elizabeth By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. London: Editions Poetry. 1945.
8vo. Original publisher's orange-red cloth with gilt lettering to spine; striking pictorial dust jacket, not price-clipped, designed by the expressionist Gerald Wilde; pp. [iv], 54, [2]; rolling to spine and marginal fading to cloth; very light rubbing to edges of dustjacket with minor loss at the top and head of spine and with light markings to lower wrapper; otherwise no foxing and internally near fine, very good.
A classic of Women's Modernist Literature. Extremely rare in its first printing, particularly in the first issue dustjacket, and in this condition.
"I will not be placated by the mechanical motions of existence…".
A 1945 novel in Prose Poetry and a deviant love story, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept is a startling example by a pioneering writer of how the books we choose have the power to alter the course of our lives. Elizabeth Smart fell in love with the English poet George Barker through her first encounter with his words in Better Books bookshop on London's Charing Cross Road in the late 1930s. So would begin a turbulant, frequently debilitating, affair with a married man which she so intricately relays in a fictional manner. This was an affair which would last well over a decade. Her heart wrenching, innovative Prose Poetry portrays the impact of the author’s passion through the unusual perspective of a female writer existing in a male-centric universe. The title itself alludes to to Psalm 137 ("By the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept …").
Smart would go onto raise her four children with George Barker as a single mother. She completed the novel in England and was working for the Ministry of Defence who, upon its publication, promptly fired her. Elizabeth Smart’s book was initally printed in 2000 hardback copies but a relentless campaign by Smart's own mother to buy and burn as many copies as was possible drastically reduced that number. She also successfully campaigned with government officials to have the book banned in Canada, making it exceptionally scarce.
The book was reissued in 1966 by Panther Books at which point novelist Angela Carter referred to it in The Guardian as; “like Madame Bovary blasted by lightning”.
The renown painter Gerald Wilde (pupil of the sculptor Henry Moore - who may have proven inspiration for the figure on the cover) created the powerful jacket image.
#2121538