LE GALLIENNE, Richard.
If I Were God. A Conversation.
A very good copy with some minor chipping around the wrappered edges. The book also appeared in cloth.
The deliberately provocative title was quite good for sales, and Whittington-Egan reports some 10,000 copies were sold: Whittington-Egan also quotes a letter from the author’s father, based solely on the book’s title: “I sincerely trust If I were God won’t offend as it seems likely to us, but does it not suggest itself to your mind that you have run counter to the public taste quite long enough and that, even if for no higher reason, it is time you began to fall in with the views and tastes and opinions of those whose favour you need in the matter of purchasing your books. —Independent people my dear can afford to smile, if I may so put it, at the public, but for those dependent on the public, the public tastes must be consulted. This may be bitter medicine to you my dear, but depend upon it, if, long years since, I had not learned to bite the bit and curb my natural impetuosity and temper, the risk would have been run of your (and all the other children) losing many of the privileges you have all enjoyed.’
