Novels 1930-1942 | Novels 1944-1962

This volume contains five novels by Dawn Powell that were first published between 1930 and 1942: Dance Night (1930), Come Back to Sorrento (under the title The Tenth Moon, 1932), Turn, Magic Wheel (1936), Angels on Toast (1940), and A Time To Be Born (1942). This volume prints the texts of the first American editions for each of these novels. Although Turn, Magic Wheel, Angels on Toast, and A Time To Be Born were published in England, Powell's involvement in the preparation of these editions was minimal, and her English editors made changes based on British conventions of spelling and usage.

Powell began writing Dance Night, her fourth published novel, in the summer of 1928, working steadily on the book throughout 1929 and the first half of 1930. While writing Dance Night, Powell considered it the most ambitious novel she had yet attempted; an entry from her diary dated February 17, 1930, reads: "Novel still not under control. Biggest job I ever tackled and not sure yet I can do it." On March 10, Powell wrote, "Hate novel as if it were a personal foe—it's so damn hard and moves so slow. I want to write plays that move fast. Can't conceive of having energy ever to attack a novel again. They're so damn huge and unwieldy." In April, Powell signed a contract with Farrar & Rinehart for Dance Night and two additional novels. She submitted her finished typescript of Dance Night to Farrar & Rinehart in early summer 1930, and the book was published in the fall. This volume prints the text of the 1930 Farrar & Rinehart edition.

Come Back to Sorrento was written in 1931 and 1932. The origin of the novel can be traced to a diary entry dated January 1, 1931, where Powell writes of "the tragedy of people who once were glamorous, now trying in mediocre stations to modestly refer to their past," and of a "grand relic" who brags, "You see me in this little town—but Bernhardt told me I was a great actress!" By March, she had begun "Madame Benjamin," the working title of Come Back to Sorrento. She submitted the novel on April 22, 1932, to Farrar & Rinehart, who suggested a new title, The Tenth Moon, taken from the book's epigraph. Although Powell agreed to the change, she expressed her dissatisfaction in a diary entry dated May 29, 1932: "How I wish they would have allowed me to call it 'Come Back to Sorrento'; since one gets so little else for one's work, a title that pleases the writer seems such a little boon to ask.a The Tenth Moon—how I hate the empty, silly, pointless title!a" The Tenth Moon was published in the fall of 1932. This volume restores Powell's title Come Back to Sorrento but otherwise prints the text of the 1932 Farrar & Rinehart edition of The Tenth Moon.

Powell conceived Turn, Magic Wheel in 1931, at about the same time she began writing Come Back to Sorrento. In diary entries of 1931, she calls it "the 'Lila' novel," referring to the original name of the character Effie Thorne. Powell wrote an outline of the book and completed more than 50 pages by July 1931, but in the fall she put it aside to concentrate on other projects: "I did a little more on Connie [Come Back to Sorrento] and decided to forget for the moment Lila's novel," Powell wrote on November 1, 1931. "I could not understand why, with Lila's story so clearly and concisely mapped out, I could not whiz right through it. Finally, it came to me that I cannot work from factual knowledge. A novel must be a rich forest known at the start only by instinct." She did not return to Turn, Magic Wheel until February 1934, shortly after finishing reading proofs for The Story of a Country Boy (1934), the last of the three novels published under her first contract with Farrar & Rinehart. In a diary entry dated February 12, 1934, Powell writes that the novel "should not be a daylight book but intense and brilliant and fine like night thoughts. No wandering but each detail should point to the one far-off star and be keyed by Lila's own waiting excitement and preserved youth." By December 1934, the novel, now called "The Hunter's Wife," had evolved and Powell considered Dennis Orphen its "central figure." She submitted a synopsis and part of the novel to Carol Brandt, her agent, in February 1935. Although a new contract stipulated that Powell was to write two more books for Farrar & Rinehart, the firm turned down "The Hunter's Wife" in April 1935 and gave her permission to publish the book elsewhere; Brandt was turned down by several houses while Powell continued to work on the novel throughout the summer and fall. The book, now titled Turn, Magic Wheel, was finished on November 2, 1935. It was then submitted to Farrar & Rinehart, which, despite its initial rejection of "The Hunter's Wife" fragment, accepted and published Turn, Magic Wheel in February 1936. The 1936 Farrar & Rinehart edition is the text printed here.

Powell worked on Angels on Toast throughout 1939 and the first half of 1940. It was the first of her novels to be brought out by Scribner's, which assigned Maxwell Perkins to edit it; Powell expressed "pleasure over Max Perkins' editorial work" in a diary entry dated September 18, 1940, shortly before the book was published. In 1956, a rewritten and radically cut version of Angels on Toast, titled A Man's Affair, was published as a paperback original by Fawcett Books. Powell never expressed dissatisfaction with Angels on Toast as it had originally been written, and she appears to have agreed to the revision for exclusively financial reasons. This volume prints the text of the 1940 Scribner's edition of Angels on Toast.

Powell began to conceive A Time To Be Born in the fall of 1940, shortly after the publication of Angels on Toast. A diary entry dated October 29, 1940, contains preliminary notes for the novel's opening scene: "Book. New York during the invasion. Eggs thrown at Willkie in Detroit. Accents on the bus. Waking up with pressure on the head. In London there is bombing. 87 children lost. A story of ambition against a background that is constantly torn down. The young men—idle, poor, no jobs to look forward to, drinking a little beer—apathetic because what chances are there for optimism?" Powell worked on A Time To Be Born throughout 1941 and finished the novel on May 18, 1942. It was published by Scribner's on August 3, 1942. The 1942 Scribner's edition of A Time To Be Born is the text printed here.