I've wavered at times over the years regarding what I believe to be the most rare, hard-to-find work by Ruth Manning-Sanders. These days, I believe it's her 1935 novel
Mermaid's Mirror, which was published by
Cassell & Co. For a while, I wasn't even sure if it was real, because it didn't show up on all of her online bibliographies. I have
never seen it for sale on Amazon, eBay or AbeBooks. And I've never seen an online image of the book or its cover.
WorldCat says it's held at four libraries overseas, including Oxford. (WorldCat also says it's at two school libraries in Texas, but I'm pretty sure those are false positives.)
I have also never found a summary or review of the book, which is odd.
All I have is this Cassell advertisement, which appears in the June 9 and June 16, 1935, editions of The Observer of London.
"A deftly-written novel of strange happenings on the Cornish Coast." That pretty much just makes me want to find this book even more.
Now I have to work even harder to manifest your next birthday present :)
ReplyDeleteI would also love to track down a copy of this! I found out that she wrote a letter on 6th June 1935 to her friend, the journalist Thomas Moult in which she mentions that "Mermaid's Mirror" is out. She says she has asked Cassell to send him a copy, and that she hopes he will be able to write something nice about it. The letters are in Leeds University's Special Collections.
ReplyDeleteHello, I found this page while searching for info about this book. Is it really that rare? I have a copy in front of me. I acquired it from a collection of old books I inherited from my grandfather after he died. I can barely find any information on it, pretty much just this site. I'm not sure if anyone will respond to this, but I would love to know more info!
ReplyDeleteFor anyone who's curious, I don't have the dust jacket, but the cover is a very dark burgundy-purple colour, with gold writing on the spine. The title page has a quote that says "Whoever looks into my glass," said the Mermaid, "will see all the glory of creation mirrored there."
It's also 312 pages long.
I hope someone responds to this. I will check back periodically. If no response, I might make a future Reddit post looking for info, and I'll post pictures there.
Thank you!
Amazing! I'm so happy to hear that someone has a copy of this scarce Ruth Manning-Sanders novel, and that you then found this post. I'd love to know more about this book, and if you could share some photographs that would be tremendous. You can email me at chrisottopa@gmail.com. .... I do think it's extremely rare. I've been trying to dig up Manning-Sanders tidbits for nearly a quarter-century and I've never seen its existence acknowledged or seen a photo.
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