Someone appears to have cut a panel from the dust jacket and saved it inside the book. It sits on a yellowed page, straight enough to look deliberate and a little crooked at the edges. The person who saved it had their reasons. A bookseller would have liked them to save a few more inches.
A private diary in a public voice
In 1931, the Macaulay Company published God Have Mercy on Me! From the Diaries of a Lost Soul. It was presented as a continuation of an anonymous woman’s diaries, associated with Marjorie Erskine Smith and her earlier book No Bed of Roses. The saved panel follows the diarist through five more years of addiction, sex work, and attempts at treatment. The jacket promises access to a life the publisher could sell while the diarist’s name stayed off the cover. In September 1931, The New Yorker found the book almost unbearably depressing. The jacket and the review agree on the ordeal. They differ on how eagerly they think you should want to read about it. The New Yorker’s 1931 review · Bibliographic record for both books
The title page of this copy gives the author line as By the Author of No Bed of Roses. That is how Macaulay expected a reader to recognize the book. For a collector trying to match an edition today, the most useful words are at the bottom of the page, where the publisher’s name sits in smaller type.
How to identify a 1931 Macaulay copy
Begin with the publisher, then turn the title page over and look for a printing or edition statement. This copy has the Macaulay imprint and blue cloth with red lettering, both consistent with the first edition described in a Potter & Potter auction catalog. The available photos leave the exact printing open. The title also circulated as a later Gold Label Books reprint with the 1931 copyright. A date by itself can send you to the wrong comparison. Potter & Potter catalog, lot 75 · Gold Label reprint listing
Compare jacket condition separately from book condition. A complete wrapper with its front, spine, back, and flaps belongs in a different comparison from blue cloth with one surviving panel. An eBay listing for this copy asked $29.99. The auction catalog describes a jacketed copy in a mixed lot, so the lot price gives no standalone figure for the book. Listing for the pictured copy
What to scan before you price it
In What’s It Worth?, add photos of the title page, its reverse, the cloth, and any surviving jacket material. Ask Which listings match the publisher, printing, and jacket condition of this copy? The publisher’s little strip of sales copy is now evidence in a different sale, nearly a century after it first tried to make one.