The Widening Stain.

Ithaca, NY Cornell University Library Associates, 1976. Hardcover Facsmile of the 1942 Alfred A. Knopf Edition, produced in 1976 for friends and members of Cornell University Library Associates. Very Good+ in Good+ DJ: The Book shows mild wear to the extremities; faint foxing to the top and fore-edges; the binding is square and secure; the text is clean. Free of creased or dog-eared pages in the text. Free of any underlining, hi-lighting or marginalia or marks in the text. Free of any ownership names, dates, addresses, notations, inscriptions, stamps, plates, or labels. A handsome copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing mild wear and a minor, unobtrusive cosmetic imperfection. The DJ shows slight loss to chipping at the head of the backstrip and a couple of short, closed tears at the top of the front panel; a tiny snag at the bottom edge of the front panel; the rear panel, while free of such problems shows toning to the outside edges of the white background field and some faint soiling due to rubbing; unclipped; mylar-protected. Intact, but showing some wear and cosmetic imperfections. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. (7.75 x 5.55 x 1 inches). 242 pages. Language: English. Weight: 15 ounces. Borwn cloth over boards with lavender designs at the outside edge of the front panel and backstrip and lavender designs at the backstrip. Distinctive DJ designed by E. McKnight Kauffer. Facsmile of the 1942 Alfred A. Knopf Edition, produced in 1976 for friends and members of Cornell University Library Associates. Hardback with DJ. Morris Gilbert Bishop (1893 – 1973) was an American scholar, historian, biographer, essayist, translator, anthologist, and poet. Bishop had a mystery novel, The Widening Stain, published in 1942 under the pseudonym W. Bolingbroke Johnson (described on the jacket as a former librarian for the American Dairy Goat Association and Okmulgee Agricultural and Mechanical Institute). The book derives both its suspense and its considerable humor from its grotesque mixture of the oil of sex with the water of academic life". Much of it is set in a university library that, according to his daughter Alison Jolly, borrowed from those of Yale and Cornell. Its sleuth is Gilda Gorham, Chief Cataloger of the library; who according to Bishop's granddaughter Margaretta Jolly appears to be based on his wife. The review in The New York Times concluded, "We do not know who W. Bolingbroke Johnson is, but he writes a good story with an academic atmosphere that is not so highly rarefied as we have been led to believe it should be in university circles." A review in The Spectator described the book (and Percival Wilde's novel Tinsley's Bones) as "good American detective stories, and as bright and cheerful as it is possible to be about murder." This tale of murder in the Cornell University Library that became a sort of cult classic after the first edition, published by Alfred A. Knopf, went through three printings in February and March of 1942. A London edition was published by John Lane in 1943, and a French translation was published in Paris in 1948.