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Nesbit, Evelyn ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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Nesbit, Evelyn Prodigal Days: The Untold Story
New York Julian Messner, Inc. (c.1934) First Edition Hardcover Good+ Illustrated by (frontispiece drawing) Charles Dana Gibson
(no dust jacket) [moderately worn copy, spine turned, book very slightly bowed, attractive vintage bookplate on front pastedown; all in all, a solid copy of an extremely hard-to-find book; see notes regarding extra items affixed to book's interior]. (pictorial endpapers) The author, the focal point of the most sensational murder case of its day (and one which still retains the power of fascination, nearly a century later), wrote two memoirs, the first ("The Story of My Life") published in 1914, and this one, which followed twenty years after. "The mysteries underlying the tragedy which the world has come to know as the 'Thaw Case' have never been divulged," she begins her preface -- and goes on to state that her then-husband Harry K. Thaw's murder of Stanford White, for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity, was actually "premeditated, long and cunningly planned," and not at all the crime of sudden, wild, uncontrolled passion that it was made out to be. But who knows? Thaw spent seven years in an asylum, and he and Evelyn were divorced in 1916, shortly after his release; he subsequently attempted suicide, spent seven more years at various funny farms, published his own book ("The Traitor") in 1926, and lived until 1947. By 1934, Evelyn was probably more than a bit batty herself: her life post-Thaw was not so much a downward spiral (though it was that, too) as an excruciatingly prolonged anti-climax, involving (in no particular order) drug addiction, fading beauty, suicide attempts, multiple career changes (actress, dancer, cafe manager), bad marriages and worse investments. She hung on, amazingly, until the age of 82, finally giving up the ghost in a nursing home in Santa Monica, California, in 1967 -- having at least lived long enough to have seen herself incarnated on-screen by Joan Collins, in the 1955 film THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING, for which she served as a technical adviser. This copy also contains a total of eleven small clippings, mostly from the 1930s and mostly about Evelyn, affixed to blank pages in both the front and back of the book; included are a couple of pictures of Evelyn, one from a "comeback" attempt in 1937, and one truly scary-looking newspaper mug shot of Thaw in 1943, accompanying a short article in which he is inexplicably quoted as saying that a U.S. victory in World War II is a sure thing.
Price:
450.00 USD
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