(early G-G winner, scarce clean Scribner’s, 1939 dj & complementary hardback design; designed by “M”?)
(her 2nd G-G winner for Fiction; this ed. Lippincott, 1944 dj; photo by Leja Gorska, design by Hallock)
(from the previous copy, an ultra-rare flatsigned title page; on the right: Jonathan Cape, 1944 dj, from Australia)
(Like her Montreal author-friend, Hugh MacLennan, Graham was interested in the 1960s Quebec political-social upheavals and partnered with Solange Chaput Rolland on this project; Macmillan; 1963 pb; she has double-signed this book to her dentist)
(included in the above book is also a rare personal letter to the dentist about an appointment for some dental work)
Gwethalyn Graham (1913-1965), nee Gwethalyn Erichsen-Brown, was born in Toronto. She was educated at Smith College and in Lausanne , Switzerland, the latter which led to her first G-G-winning novel about a Swiss-finishing-girls’ school, Swiss Sonata, which also got her on the Nazi blacklist. Graham was influenced by Stendahl, Hemingway, Cather, Arthur Koestler, and her feminist-mother. She was friends with Pierre Trudeau, Hugh MacLennan, and F.R. Scott.
Her second novel, another G-G winner for Fiction, Earth and High Heaven, was the first Canadian novel to top the New York Times‘ bestseller list. A movie planned, starring Katharine Hepburn, was never made. As well as being against anti-Semitism, Graham also was against discrimination toward French-Canadians as seen in her Dear Enemies non-fiction book. Tragically, Graham died relatively young of an undiagnosed brain tumor.