THE DEVIL'S OWN

by Roberts, Janet Louise

$250 · Offered by Biblio

First edition

(New York): Avon, 1972. First edition. Near fine.. Lurid and diabolical Avon paperback original, an early hybrid of '70s occult exploitation pulp and traditional paperback gothic signifiers. Though not officially part of Avon's elite "Satanic Gothic" line - Roberts would later write that line's best-known title, LORD SATAN, as "Louisa Bronte" - THE DEVIL'S OWN is a satanic gothic par excellence: the small light that blazes in the background of the front cover as the heroine runs in bridal white through a dark forest shines not from a mansion window, but from the torches propped in a witches' cauldron: a simple and highly effective adaptation of traditional cover iconography, signaling a gothic with a difference. Innocent college student Isabel faces many obstacles in her path to seduction by Lucifer: wicked aunts, psychical research, lit professors offering drugs with one hand and Hemingway with the other, a girl "known on campus for being a Lesbian" - but through it all, her horrible destiny awaits. In a 1979 interview, Roberts, a librarian in private life, attributed her use of pseudonyms to a wish not to embarrass her conservative religious father - though THE DEVIL'S OWN, published under her own name, was already as outrageous to conservative religious sensibilities as one could wish for. In the later '70s, the paperback gothic formula as constituted in the previous decade would be assailed on all sides: by feminist critical contempt from the likes of Joanna Russ, usually

• Publisher: Avon
• Year: 1972
• Edition: First Edition
• Binding: unknown

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