The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy (HQ248)

Circa 1925: Hardcover / Very Good Condition

Original maroon cloth with titles on the spine. 336 clean and bright slightly age-toned pages, mild speckled foxing on the endpapers and edges. Boards slightly rubbed and faded with time consistent with age. (HQ248)

Postage €6.95 including additional books ordered.
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Avant-garde composer Albert Sanger lives in a ramshackle chalet in the Swiss Alps, surrounded by his 'Circus' of assorted children, admirers and a slatternly mistress. The family and their home life may be chaotic, but visitors fall into an enchantment, and the claims of respectable life or upbringing fall away.

When Sanger dies, his Circus must break up and each find a more conventional way of life. But fourteen-year-old Teresa is already deeply in love: for her, the outside world holds nothing but tragedy.

Margaret Kennedy was born in London in 1896 and read History at Somerville College, Oxford in 1915 (alongside Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain) where she began writing. In 1924, Kennedy’s second novel The Constant Nymph became a worldwide bestseller which she adapted into a hit West End play starring Noel Coward (three different star-studded film versions followed). Described as ‘superb’ by Elizabeth Bowen, Kennedy wrote fifteen further prize-winning novels including The Feast in 1950, as well as literary criticism and a biography of Jane Austen. She died in 1967. [Google Books]