The Plains of Cement

Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1935. First Edition. Hardcover. Fair+/Poor. Light gray cloth boards with orange decoration and black titling are lightly soiled and suntanned. Priceclipped DJ split at spine with loss at head of spine, bottom front edge, and upper third of rear; sunfaded and generally edgeworn. Binding is sound and pages unmarked. Red upper page edges are fading. 8vo. BOOK INFO: 'You will enjoy this story of a London pub and its romance of two romantically bewildered people.... Though a complete story in itself, this novel follows The Midnight Bell and The Siege of Pleasure as the final book of a trilogy. Begun as far back as 1931, the delay in its appearance is due to the fact that the author was knocked down by a car in January, 1932, and put completely out of action for practically two years.'-from the publisher. English playwright and novelist, Hamilton, was well-regarded by his peers, though underappreciated during his time. Study of his novels is reviving recently because of their distinctive style, deploying a Dickensian narrative voice to convey aspects of inter-war London street culture. They display a strong sympathy for the poor, as well as an acerbic black humour. Doris Lessing wrote in The Times in 1968: 'Hamilton was a marvellous novelist who's grossly neglected'. He authored the play Gas Light, which gave rise to the term gaslighting, a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim with the intent of making him/her doubt his/her own memory and perception, which is also unfortunately enjoying a revival in popular culture. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky; gaslighting; Dickensian; London fiction