Lettice Delmer. A Novel in Verse.

Bookseller Notes

The dedication copy, inscribed twice by the author, who supplements the printed dedication 'To H.C.E.' with 'from U.R. [i.e., Ursula Roberts]'; meanwhile, on the half-title, she adds 'by "Susan Miles", before proceeding with a long quotation from Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religio Medici' 'Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs, doublings, and wrenches, which pass a while under the effects of chance, but at the last, well examined, prove the meet hand of God'. The recipient is obscure.A novel in free verse, concerned with the Great War and its aftermath bold in both form and theme, with Lettice experiencing a 'voyage in the dark' broadly analogous to those suffered by Jean Rhys's heroines, and including rape and abortion among the trials of the protagonist, though with a more hopeful conclusion than can be found in Rhys. The dustjacket carries the praise of Storm Jameson, Frances Cornford, Rayner Heppenstall and T.S. Eliot, who considered it 'a very poignant story'.