The Divine Gift

London: Longmans, Green, 1929.

First edition of a novel widely thought to be written by Clive Bell, art critic and member of the Bloomsbury Group who had married Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Stephen, in 1907. Publisher's black cloth with red lettering to upper board and spine, which is slightly faded. Unobtrusive previous owner signature to front pastedown, else clean and crisp copy of a scarce title. Christabel McLaren (1890-1974) married the politician and horticulturalist Henry McLaren, who became Baron Aberconway in 1934. She was well connected in London literary society, as well as on the edge of the Bloomsbury Group, enjoying long friendships with HG Wells, W. Somerset Maugham, Siegfried Sassoon, and the Bloomsbury circle. In his book 'Bloomsbury Recalled' Quentin Bell asserts that the work was, in fact, ghost written by Clive Bell along with, to a greater extent, Desmond MacCarthy. McLaren subsequently published a pair of children's stories, illustrated by Rex Whistler, and a book on cats, under her married name of Lady Aberconway.