Preface by Sir Walton Layton, C.B.E., C.H., LL.D.


Methuen & Co., London, 1941. Cloth. Book Condition: Good. No Jacket. First U.K. Edition. 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall. American writer whose work, mostly her light, entertaining novels set among the upper classes, were frequently adapted for stage and film. Alice Duer was of a wealthy and distinguished family and grew up on an estate in Weehawken, New Jersey. The family fortune was lost in a banking failure. She studied mathematics and astronomy at Barnard College beginning in 1895, earning her way through publishing short stories, essays and poems in national magazines. She graduated in June 1899 and married Henry Wise Miller in October of that year. She began teaching and he initiated a career in business. As he succeeded in business and as a stock trader, she was able to give up teaching and devote herself to writing. Her specialty was in light fiction. She also travaled and worked for woman suffrage, writing a column "Are Women People?" for the New York Tribune. Her columns were published in 1915 as Are Women People? and more columns in 1917 as Women are People! By the 1920s her stories were being made into successful motion pictures, and she worked in Hollywood as a writer and even as acted (a bit part) in Soak the Rich. Her 1940 story, The White Cliffs, is perhaps her best-known story, and its World War II theme of a marriage of an American to a British soldier made it a favorite on both sides of the Atlantic. Includes Poems from WW2.