The Girls of Slender Means

First published in 1963, this novel is set in 1945 at the May of Teck Club, a Kensington hostel for young women of limited income. Residents share clothes, meals, and a single Schiaparelli dress as they look for work, lovers, and a way out of rationed London. Joanna recites poetry; Jane works in publishing; Selina moves among richer rooms. Nicholas Farringdon, an anarchist writer who visits the club, becomes attached to the household and later looks back on it. The book is a short social comedy that darkens, not a documentary of any one hostel.

Bound in buckram blocked with a design by Lyndon Hayes. Dark blue slipcase.