A popular read from 1938. It is easy to imagine this relatively cheap edition delighting commuters and others and it formed part of a list aimed at a wide readership. The cover statement that it was already in its 37th thousand shows just how much it was finding its market. It must have been an enjoyable piece of escapism for readers in an increasingly worrying world.
But there is no doubt, as the cover suggests, the plot owes a great deal to J.B. Priestley’s ‘The Good Companions’ published nine years earlier in 1929. Priestley’s book had enjoyed considerable success on publication and on the stage in 1931 and its first film version in 1933.
In this version, a wealthy benefactor (this time Simon Hayseed, a 38 year old, recent inheritor of the wealth of ‘Baby’s Soothing Balm’) escapes from under the thumb of his family. He encounters a down-at- heel acting troupe in Cardiff as they are cast out on the street and becomes their financial salvation. From then on, a sentimental love affair, theatrical failure and, of course, triumph, a touch of religion, an arrogant beauty brought low and disfigured.
Author Oliver Sandys knew her audience. Her name is larger than the title on the spine and reflects her very considerable success. Oliver Sandys was a pseudonym, one of a number used by the British writer and screenwriter Marguerite Florence Laura Jarvis (1886-1964). Thirty-eight of her some 130 worked were published under this name including an early success ‘The Honeypot’ in 1916.
The Solitary Reader 