Margery Lawrence Step Light, Lady signed 1942 UK 1st author's own copy
Margery Lawrence - Step Light, Lady - 1942 UK. Author's copy, inscribed in blue ink to the front endpaper: "Margery Lawrence Published 1942 Sixteenth book (Novel)", and additionally inscribed in the year of publication to the half-title page: "To Arthur With my love, as always Margery 1942", the recipient was her husband Arthur Edward Towle who died in 1948. The book is bound in hard-wearing dark blue cloth with matching blue top-stain to the text block and a brown faux leather spine label, lettered and decorated in gilt. The binding is firm, the cloth is lightly rubbed and marked, the spine a little faded. The text block is slightly foxed, marked and age toned. A novel set in France just before WW2 and partly written before the conflict began, so filled with an atmosphere of tension, euphoria and foreboding.
It describes the lives of a troupe of left-wing dancers living communally in rural Brittany, led by the charismatic and scandalous AnnaLise. The group are disturbed by the arrival of her daughter from England, left as a baby with her conservative, donnish father, who she abandoned for life as an artist with her lover Etienne.