Christina Alberta's Father
Author: Herbert George "H G" Wells (1866-1946)
Year: 1925
Publisher: MacMillian and Company
Place: New York
Description:
401 pages. Small octavo (7 3/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original red cloth with gilt lettering to spine and cover with blind-stamped ruled edges in original pictorial jacket. First American edition.
Christina Alberta's Father is a novel by H. G. Wells set in London and environs in 1920–1922 with two protagonists: Albert Edward Preemby and his daughter, Christina Alberta. Starting off as a seemingly light-hearted novel of social realism, highlighting the class system of contemporary society, much like he did in Kipps, Wells soon lambasts the then-current state of mental health legislation and of asylums, before ending the novel with the characters discussing feminism and the conflict between individual independence and being a willing part of a greater society. With the title character of the father dying of pneumonia after rescue from a mental hospital, and his daughter Christina Albert refusing to marry her love interest Bobby Roothers (after candidly admitting to him that she is no longer a virgin), the expected happy ending does not occur. Perhaps due to its descent into open didacticism, the novel was not one of Wells' most successful or popular.
Condition:
Light rubbing to extremities, previous owner's name on front end paper. Jacket spine ends chipped, edge wear with small chips and tears with creases, fold over edges rubbed else very good in about very good jacket
