Maria Chapdelaine: A Tale of the Lake St. John Country

New York: Modern Library, 1934. first thus. Hardcover. fair. First Modern Library edition, missing dust jacket. Fair condition. Balloon cloth covered boards with gold torchbearer on front, and gold lettering on the spine; spine is faded; boards are worn with bumps; sticker shadow on front board. Rockwell Kent end papers. Pages are clean and unmarked, slightly darkening with age. This is Modern Library binding style 6. Modern Library hard cover, missing dust jacket. First edition 1934 (stated), Modern Library #10, 288 pages. 12mo (4.25"" x 6.5"") The first edition of Maria Chapdelaine has an erratum tipped in at page 288. The erratum reads ""This book has been printed from the plates of the Modern Readers' Series."" The Modern Readers' Series was Macmillan's entry in the low-cost hard-cover reprint series. The errata slip is present. Louis Hemon (1880 - 1913) was born in France, in Brest, and studied for a career in law and diplomacy, but his heart was in literature. When his stories began to sell, he abandoned his law studies. He moved to England, then Canada in 1911, initially settling in Montreal. Hmon wrote the romance novel Maria Chapdelaine during his time working at a farm in the Lac Saint-Jean region, in the north of Quebec. After mailing off the manuscript, he set off on foot on vacation along the tracks of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. At a curve in the line, he did not hear an oncoming train and was struck and killed. Maria Chapdelaine, originally written by a French emigre to Canada and done into English by a Canadian, still remains Canada's most lasting contribution to English Romantic Literature. It has been filmed four times and adapted into stage plays and opera.