SEDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM : THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF SEDUCTION : A BEGINNER'S HANDBOOK

New York: Brewer and Warren, Inc, 1930. First Edition. Hardcover. Reading Copy. Small octavo, 7.5 in. x 4.5 in., pp. xxv, [1], 198. Peach cloth boards with blue title to spine. Soiling to boards with moisture stain to rear board. Previous owner's name to front free endpaper. Front hinge exposed, but holding, at title page, Chips to front edge and deteriotrated top corners to several pages, but no loss of text. Booksellers sticker to rear pastedown. Emily Hahn (1905-1997) was the author of fifty-two books, as well as 181 articles and short stories for the New Yorker from 1929 to 1996. She was a staff writer for the magazine for forty-seven years. She wrote novels, short stories, personal essays, reportage, poetry, history and biography, natural history and zoology, cookbooks, humor, travel, children's books, and four autobiographical narratives. A revolutionary for her time, Hahn broke many of the rules of the 1920s, traveling the country dressed as a boy, working for the Red Cross in Belgium, becoming the concubine to a Shanghai poet, using opium, and having a child out of wedlock. She fought against the stereotype of female docility that characterized the Victorian era and was an advocate for the environment until her death.

This is the author's first book, an audacious and cutting satire on thre relationship between the sexes.