The Virgin & the Gipsy

First published in 1930, this novella follows Yvette Saywell, who returns from school with her sister to their father's rectory in the English Midlands. Their mother has left; the household is ruled by the Mater, a blind, exacting grandmother, and by a thin clerical respectability. Yvette meets a gypsy and his family at the edge of the parish and is drawn to a life outside the rectory's watch. A neighbouring couple and a local dam enter the last movement of the story. The book is a short novel of sexual and social constraint, not a travel sketch of Romany life.

Bound in pale blue cloth with an illustration in dark blue. Glassine dust-jacket, dark blue slipcase.