DUNSANY, Lord (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, 1878-1957). The Curse of the Wise Woman. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1933. 8vo. 309 pp. Publisher's green cloth in original unclipped ("$3.00") pictorial jacket. FIRST AMERICAN, FIRST PRINTING OF LORD DUNSANY'S SEMI-AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL, SCARCE IN JACKET.

The stand-alone novel, among Dunsany's best-known and most acclaimed works, is distinguished from his characteristic output in its restrained use of fantasy elements. The semi-autobiographical protagonist is a motherless Anglo-Irish teenager with a love for shooting, hunting, and the beauties of nature. In order to defend his local peat bog from industrial encroachment, he must collaborate with an occult "wise woman" through which the novel, despite its comparative realism, retains "the feel of the purest fantasy." Almost never seen in jacket. 

Jacket toned and rubbed, chipping to margins, spine block top and bottom chipped, tears and edge wear, light foxing to interior flaps. Boards lightly rubbed; foxing throughout, toning to endpapers, ownership signature to ffep. Very good.