LETHBRIDGE, Mabel
 
Fortune Grass; published by Geoffrey Bles, London in 1934
 
Description
 
Octavo. Original green cloth, title stamped to upper board and spine in vivid orange.
Light, sporadic foxing to leaf edges and preliminary pages, minor softening to spine tips, minimal handling marks to cloth grain. A very good, tight, structurally square copy.
First edition, second printing (published in October 1934).
Presentation copy, beautifully inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: "With all good wishes from — Mabel Lethbridge, June, 1938."
Signed copies of Lethbridge’s autobiographical works are exceptionally rare on the market. This inscription dates from June 1938, a period during which Lethbridge was promoting her third memoir, The Sweet Chariot, and represents a desirable association from the peak of her literary and public visibility.
Fortune Grass is the searing, matter-of-fact autobiography of one of the First World War's most resilient figures. In 1917, at just 17 years old, Lethbridge forged her age to enlist at the National Filling Factory No. 7 in Hayes, Middlesex, volunteering for the high-risk Amatol filling division. Just nine days into her service, a horrific explosion of a "monkey machine" left her as the sole immediate survivor of her unit, resulting in permanent lung damage and the amputation of her left leg. Denied a state war pension due to her underage enlistment, Lethbridge’s memoir chronicles not only the harrowing realities of the wartime "Munitionettes" but her astonishing post-war survival as a street-organ entertainer and West End entrepreneur. Her resilience later made her the subject of a dedicated BBC Great War documentary broadcast and a feature on This Is Your Life.