ALLEN, Grant. The Woman Who Did.

‘For Women’s Sake I Would Be A Free Woman’

ALLEN, Grant. The Woman Who Did. Boston: Roberts Bros and London: John Lane. 1895

8vo. Publisher’s olive cloth, floral design by Beardsley to upper board in black, spine lettered in gilt, green floral endpapers; pp. [2 (half-title, Keynotes device)], 223, [1 (blank)], [10 (advertisements)]; title-page repeating design from upper board; spine darkened and gilt text faded, joints rubbed, small loss to head of spine; tissue guard foxed; else a very good copy; old catalogue clipping adhered to front pastedown; sporadic early twentieth-century pencil annotations.

First American edition, published simultaneously in Boston and London as part of John Lane’s Keynotes series, with a title-page and cover design by Aubrey Beardsley, of this progressive novel in which a Cambridge-educated, middle-class young woman defies social convention by having a child out of wedlock and raising her as a single mother.

Having finished her studies at Girton, Herminia Barton moves to London on her own and falls in love with lawyer Alan Merrick, suggesting that they live together without getting married in the name of female emancipation. ‘She gives birth to a daughter, but after Merrick’s sudden death tragedy overwhelms her life with remorseless precision. Allen honestly intended the novel as a polemic on the position of women and dedicated it to his wife […] It caused a great sensation, and the public read it eagerly […] the notoriety of The Woman who Did helped establish the “new woman” novel as a genre. The novel also claimed the notice of many late twentieth-century feminists for its outspoken analysis of the female dilemma’ (ODNB).

Herminia’s daughter, Dolly, previously unaware of her parentage, discovers the truth when her engagement is in danger of being called off, and declares that she cannot marry her fiancé while her mother lives. Unable to bear her daughter’s shame, Herminia commits suicide by poisoning. The work inspired two notable contemporary fictional responses: Victoria Crosse’s The Woman Who Didn’t (1895, no. 18 in John Lane’s Keynotes series), and Mrs Lovetts Cameron’s The Man Who Didn’t (1895).

This copy features several wry annotations. When Herminia tells Alan that she has chosen to remain unmarried, for example, our annotator writes: ‘You poor dear girl – don’t you know that the world is very old: all this has been tried before, and it didn’t work. Most of the restrictions under which we live are the outcome of the fact that man as a rule is not to be trusted. In other words he will Welsh, if he has the opportunity. If we were wise and honest the[re] would be no necessity for laws and regulations; until then it is advisable to obey the law’.

Gertner Zatlin 837; Samuels Lasner 32; Vallance 69.viii.

SKU: 2126050