The New Moon with the Old.

SMITH, Dodie.

$750.00

Item Number: 148386

London: Heinemann, 1963.

First edition of the author’s charming third novel. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author to her Aunt in the year of publication on the front free endpaper, “To Auntie Elsie with love from Dodie. 1963.” Very good in a very good dust jacket. Jacket design by Peter Ward.

Dodie Smith, best known for her enduring children’s novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians and the widely acclaimed I Capture the Castle, also explored themes of identity, independence, and social transition in her lesser-known adult novels. The New Moon with the Old (1963) exemplifies her light comic style while reflecting postwar British anxieties about class, self-reinvention, and the shifting roles of women. The novel follows four siblings and their housekeeper as they navigate unexpected independence after their father's abrupt flight from scandal, each pursuing a dramatically different path.