Background for Venus

New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Very Good+ in Good dj. 1935 (c.1934). First American Edition. Hardcover. [solid, clean copy, with a bit of wear to cloth at spine extremities; jacket edgeworn and rubbed, some fading to spine, a little paper loss at bottom corners of front panel and top of spine, 3-inch split at bottom front foldover, a few tiny tears and nicks along top edge]. Novel, set in the London art world, with "all the glamour and thrill" attendant thereto: "The London of the galleries, academies, studios in Chelsea and Soho, expensive restaurants, exclusive hotels. Art dealers fighting and double-crossing each other. Artists who fall victims to their plans and whims. Prostitutes who shop at Worth's and live in Savoy suites. Degenerates of society in shining hats and grey waistcoats, swarming like bees around the galleries and exhibitions. Cranks who spend their time disputing, proving, disproving, discovering strange signatures. All are here, depicted by one who knows them and who is able to embody what he knows in a tale that never flags." Laver was an insider, for sure: a critic, an art and fashion historian, and a museum curator, who worked in various curatorial capacities at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1922 until his retirement in 1958, serving during his final twenty years as Keeper of Prints, Drawings and Paintings. First published in England by Heinemann in 1934, this was the second of Laver's four novels, all published in a spurt between 1933 and 1936; after that, having apparently gotten the novelistic bug out of his system, he wrote exclusively nonfiction works, including many on the history of costume (a particular passion), and was once called "the man in England who made the study of costume respectable." His first novel, "Nymph Errant" (1933), was adapted for a stage musical with songs by Cole Porter; the movie rights were purchased by the Fox Film Corporation (later Twentieth Century-Fox), and although no film version was ever produced, they reportedly came in handy when the studio made its big-budget musical flop STAR! in 1968, a biopic of Gertrude Lawrence, who had starred in the original stage production. . (Inventory #: 17323)