Judge, The.
West, Rebecca. The Judge. London: Hutchinson & Co, [1922].
8vo.; red cloth, spine sunned, light wear to extremities; white illustrated dust-jacket, lightly edgeworn; colonial library sticker on spine.
First edition of this novel about the mother and the lover of a man who becomes a murderer; “a study, subtle, ruthless and penetrating, of the actions and reactions of the feminine temperament, in love, jealousy, repulsion and remorse.” The story West originally conceived of featured a judge who confronts the wife of a man he sentenced for murder. The book she finally produced strayed from this plan, but earned the praise of W. Somerset Maugham: “I do not think there is anyone writing who can hold a candle to you” (quoted in Glendinning, 86). Her exploration of the lives of two women of different generations led West to write the epigraph reproduced in the cover illustration: “Every mother is a judge who sentences the children for the sins of the father,” a curious sentiment in a book dedicated to her own mother. A scarce book, rarely encountered in the dust-jacket.
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