Stranger In The Land Ward Thomas (A Gay Teacher Is Blackmailed In A Small American Town When A Scandal Erupts) Gay Themes,Literature

Octavo. 373 pp. Blue cloth, gilt titles to spine. The jacket is unclipped with the neat addition of a price sticker ('15/- net'). The jacket flap bears the words 'second impression'. The term 'reprinted before publication' can mean that errors detected in the first print run have been removed with a revised version before the book was released. Alternatively, it can mean that the publishers have received more demands for the book, from booksellers, libraries etc before the release and a second print run made. The jacket is in near-fine condition with only a very slight 'tanning' to the top margin of the rear, white, panel. The top edge of the text block is blue. No inscriptions. A near-fine copy of a very scarce work. The information carried on the inner flap of the jacket describes the central character as a 'tortured pervert malgre soi', which suggests a lack of sympathy for the protagonist on the publisher's (or the blurb writer's) part. Raymond Manton, a teacher in a small town is not, in fact, all that sympathetic, though as a closet homosexual, crushed with loneliness he should be, but his aloof dismissal of his students is ripe with snobbery. His only 'friend' is a young man eight years younger, and when he turns blackmailer in the aftermath of a scandal erupting in the town when several homosexuals are exposed, Raymond's life looks set to collapse. The rather tired, literary trope of the 'tortured homosexual' is played out to the full here, but the writing is assured, even if Raymond is not all that likeable. Despite the intimation that it was 'reprinted before publication' the UK edition is vanishingly rare.