The Secret Places of the Heart

$250 · Offered by Book Collector Inc

Author: Herbert George "H G" Wells (1866-1946) Year: 1922 Publisher: Cassell and Company, Ltd Place: London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne Description: 311 pages. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5") bound in original green cloth with gilt lettering to spine and blind stamped decoration to spine and front cover. Front cover with blind stamped title and author. First edition. This thinly-veiled autobiographical novel depicts an English gentleman, Sir Richard Hardy (Wells), who is attempting to sort out his marital problems while he travels the English countryside in the company of a psychiatrist (based loosely on Havelock Ellis). Along the way, Hardy encounters a confident and attractive young American woman named Miss Grammont (Sanger) who is an avid supporter of birth control. The semi-fictional triumvirate of the sexually troubled protagonist, his Freudian doctor and the independent, alluring, self-assured American woman, offered Wells an opportunity to discuss the topics of sexuality, marriage, love, and jealousy: themes that drive many of his other novels and autobiographical works. Secret Places of the Heart also served as a kind of extended love letter from Wells to Sanger in lieu of the actual thing (his letters were usually brief and informational). Late in the book, the protagonist Hardy characterized his affair with Grammont; it could just as well have been Wells writing to Sanger: We have to carry the whole affair on to a Higher Plane - and keep it there. We two love one a

• Binding: Hardcover

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