The Gioconda Smile

First edition thus. Sm. 8vo. Pp. 57, [1]. Yellow, red and black patterned paper-covered boards in like dustwrapper. First separate edition of Huxley's first crime story (originally published in Mortal Coils, 1922), and issued in the Zodiac Book series.

Some discolouration to spine, neat ink ownership inscription on front free endpaper, else fine.

This tale and his only other foray into murder mystery, 9 A.M. (1924), were based on the notorious 1920 murder trial of solicitor Harold Greenwood and the even-more-celebrated 1923 Bywaters-Thompson case of "romance turned to murder," both of which were presided over by his friend, Justice Sir Montague Shearman.

An essential "cornerstone" title, featured by D.L. Sayers in her 1928 chronological compilation Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. A dramatic adaptation by Huxley premiered at the New Theatre, St. Martin's Lane, London, on 3rd June 1948, in a production directed by Peter Glenville and starring Pamela Brown, Brenda Bruce, Clive Brook and Marie Ney. Further, basis for the American film noir, A Woman's Vengeance, starring Charles Boyer and Ann Blyth, released the same year as the play's premiere.

[NCBEL IV, p.610; Nugel, Bernfried, and Jerome Meckier, (eds.). Aldous Huxley Annual: A Journal of Twentieth-Century Thought and Beyond. Volume 16 (2016), p.1–2]