Horse Shoe Bottoms

New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1935. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (21cm); beige linen, with titles stamped in red on spine and front cover; patterned endpapers; dustjacket; [vi],298pp. Medium-sized booksellers label to front pastedown, else Fine. Dustjacket is price-clipped, shelfworn and spine-sunned, with several tears and attendant creases, a few shallow losses along lower edge, with shallow loss along the length of the upper edge (minimally affecting lettering); Good to Very Good. Tippett's first novel, written on a Guggenheim Fellowship, telling the story of John Stafford, "who leaves England in the 1870's with his young bride Ellen to work in the Wantling coal mine in Illinois. Tippett tells, in great detail, of the severe life of the nineteenth century miner -- long hours of work, accidents, wage cuts...John becomes active in the union movement and is soon recognized as a leader. He is elected to represent his fellow miners at a union convention and there, under the influence of the eloquent older miner, John Siney, he becomes convinced of the need for a national miners' union...There are a series of strikes in the novel, the miners' desperate and pathetic attempts to better their conditions, and, more basically, their groping efforts to attain a life of dignity" (BLAKE, pp.145-146). Scarce in dustjacket. COAN, p.87.