1930 First Edition-London, Chatto & Windus

American Edition 1930 New York, Appleton

'For Ann--poor Ann!--is a renegade; her wistful dreaming eyebrows unfortunately give quite a wrong impression. Every year she has hoped against hope, and every year the lovely inedible petals have cheated her. For she has a fundamental, instinctive conviction that they are out of place. Flowers are beautiful in gardens...and in houses, of course...but in a pie you want fruit. Apples. Hot and fragrant and faintly pink, with lots of juice and cloves. She wished there had been apples in her pie...'

In this, her first novel, ("less precious than the title implies," says Margery) she argues effectively for the beauty and intrinsic value of the commonplace--which is to be a subtly recurring theme in her future works. When we first meet Ann Laventie she seems an unlikely renegade, with an even more unlikely cause. Born into the genteel Laventie family, which is an erudite and exclusive world unto itself, Ann is at once filled with pride and stricken with terror at the implied demands of her scholarly birthright. The Laventies consider themselves and their separateness from community--in a falsely deprecating sense--as 'suffering from intellectual inbreeding'. But Ann--gentle Ann--while loving her family devotedly, has never quite been able to be 'one of them', and lives in the fear that someday they are going to find her out. ..'She hated Epstein and loved pale pink sunsets, and that was all wrong.' To not be one of them is to be against them, and Ann--while longing for the homely pleasures of a husband and children over the merits of free love and free verse--is afraid to alienate her highbrow family. Love from a surprising place becomes the catalyst for her bid for independence. This is an absorbing and beautifully told tale of finding the courage to be different--even when 'different' simply means ordinary.

First Edition, 1932 London, A. Barker, ltd.

American edition, 1933 New York, G.P. Putnam's sons

'"Quietly, Alistair," said Aunt Gertrude.
And quietly as a mouse, through all the changing panoply of petticoats, shorts and flannel bags, young Alistair tiptoed past the study door. Aunt Gertrude tiptoed too, and all the female cousins who were so often staying with them: for behind that door old Mr. French was studying Aramaic. At his death, and as a direct result of this pious observance, the linoleum in the passage was practically as good as new, but the great locked book-cases, on the other hand, were unfortunately found to contain no fewer than fifteen hundred sixpenny detective stories.'

The death of the cagey old Mr. French leaves his young son Alistair with more disillusionment than sadness, but more to the point, it also leaves him with one hundred pounds of inheritance money to buy his freedom from stodgy clerk-dom. And Alistair French knows exactly what he's going to do with that freedom--move to London, live in Piccadilly on the cheap, lead a genuine vie de boheme with artists and intellectuals, and finally end by wowing them all with his literary brilliance. First he has to write something, of course, but not before he meets the classic and lovely Cressida, an actress who has the fascinating capacity to dismiss eternity with the slight movement of her shoulder. Adding further to the confusion is the charming and plucky Winnie Parker, who lives in the downstairs flat of his Bohemian retreat, has a frizzy mop of hair and desires a red fake leopard skin coat above all other things. The only constant in Alistair's startlingly new and colorful life is the blank piece of writing paper that eludes his genius. A wonderful early work by Sharp, considered the book that established her reputation as an author. Hailed as 'a small but flawless gem', with her classic weaving of the offbeat into the staid and ordinary, it is a loving salute to the dreams of youth. Ah, well, says our author philosophically at the end--"It'll always be something to look back on."

First edition, 1932 London, A. Barker

illustrations by Anna Zinkeisen--

This book was also included as one of three novelettes in 'Three Companion Pieces', published 1941 by Little, Brown

'So soon as the song was ended, therefore, Sir George took out a pocket book with the intention of noting down his debt; and in so doing had the ill fortune to attract the attention of his next door neighbor. She was an old lady in a red gown, and he had already singled her out, from all that terrifyingly wellbred assembly, as easily the most formidable. The possibility of being presented to her had clouded his whole evening, and it was in a trance of pure terror that he now saw her turn in her chair. With exquisite urbanity Madame la Marechale leaned forward and addressed him in French. Crimson to the ears, notebook suspended, Sir George marshalled all his faculties in a desperate effort at comprehension. It was no use. For the first time that evening (and sincerely enough to compensate for any previous neglect) he regretted the absence of his tutor....'

(And it's with a similar ineptitude that Sir George bumbles through a romance and brings home a French ballerina as a bride.)

First edition, 1933, London, A. Barker, ltd.

American edition, 1934, New York, Putnam

Reprinted 1952 by Little, Brown of Boston (confusingly labeled a first edition)

'...at about a few minutes past six on the 20th of March, 1929, Lesley Frewen stood adjusting the angle of a small black hat. Beneath the tilted brim a face immaculately plucked, rouged and powdered met her final glance with a well-grounded confidence: she was looking just as every other woman wanted to look, and could continue to do so for at least four hours. From the telephone by the bed came a low repeated burr: the taxi was waiting. A rapid glance into her handbag assured her of lipstick, powder, cigarettes: complete in every material detail, and with mind serenely attuned to social intercourse, Lesley Frewen went to the party.'

'The Flowering Thorn' gives Margery away as something of a moralist. Painting a charmingly ruthless picture of the life of the langoruous and pleasure-seeking twenties, (so well-satirized in the plays of Noel Coward) she saves one of the Bright Young Things from her fashionable self. Lesley Frewen is very much a part of that privileged world--envied by her friends, comfortably settled into one of the most elite living establishments, says 'dahling' at all the right parties to all the right people who say 'dahling' back--but Lesley Frewen comes to a radical decision one night. Facially speaking, things couldn't be better. But as to her life? Empty and meaningless. What can she do about it? The solution presents itself in the package of an orphaned four year old boy. What follows is a wonderful story, but carefully and credibly told. This, Margery seems to be saying, not only could happen, but should happen.

First edition, 1934, London, A. Barker, ltd.

1934, illustrated by Anna Zinkeisen, New York, G.P. Putnams Sons

Also printed as one of three novelettes in 'Three Companion Pieces' printed in 1941 by Little, Brown

'Early the next morning, the deck being almost deserted, Sophy saw one of the sailors pause and stare out to sea. She went up to him, and following the direction of his finger, perceived on the horizon a dark ambiguous shore.

"What is the name of that shore, sailor?"

"The Coromandel Coast--"

And so 'Sophy Cassmajor' ends innocently enough, as it started innocently enough. But there is an ocean of change in between that happened to this young, seventeen year-old girl on the sea voyage that will take her to her betrothed..."for she could remember with perfect distinctness, what it had been like. One rose in the morning feeling quite fresh and cheerful; one wondered what dress to put on, and what there would be for dinner. One was always expecting--there lay the charm of it!--something to happen....But when something had happened--when everything had happened--what could one do then--?"

First edition, 1935, London, Arthur Barker

First Canadian edition, 1935, Reginald Saunders, Toronto

American edition,1935 by G.P. Putnam's Sons, N.Y.

American Reprint, 1935, by Grosset and Dunlap

"Richmond Lodge was her guilty secret, the one point on which she ran deliberately counter to public opinion. The house itself appeared to her grand, melancholy, and imposing; but the garden--the green and shaggy wilderness, half-glimpsed over a gate or wall--had the allurements of Eden. Like Eve after the Fall, she hovered longingly without; but where Eve had only memories, Caroline had imagination."

Interestingly, Sharp prefaces this novel with, not a dedication, but an inscription. A quote from Jane Austen: 'Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.' Fortunately, Sharp felt no need in this novel to be one of the 'other pens'. Four Gardens is a quiet story, gently told, and chronicles a woman's life through the four different gardens that she loves. The first--the wild and abandoned garden of Richmond Lodge, the second featuring her prosaic but absorbing interest in runner beans, the third a lavish garden she becomes mistress of but cannot freely pick a single flower from, and the fourth garden a mere rooftop that promises contentment, individual freedom, and the heady pleasure of Aesopus tulips. It is, as well, a story that pays tribute to the last of a breed of British gentlewomen; and with ironic humor tinged with regret, Sharp contrasts the new generation that follows.

First edition, 1937, London, Arthur Barker

First American edition, 1937, Boston, Little, Brown, and Co.

Reprint, January, 1938, Boston, Little, Brown and Co.

There have been several reprints of this popular story--following initial publication, the story was also serialized in the Saturday Evening Post.

A play based on this book, entitled 'Lady in Waiting' c.1941, dramatized by Sharp, was modestly successful with a brief run in New York--Glady George in the leading role. The movie, 'Julia Misbehaves', with Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, and Elizabeth Taylor was also based on the story.

"Julia, by marriage Mrs. Packett, by courtesy Mrs. Macdermot, lay in her bath singing the Marseillaise. Her fine robust contralto, however, was less resonant than usual; for on this particular summer morning the bathroom, in addition to the ordinary fittings, contained a lacquer coffee table, seven hatboxes, half a dinner service, a small grandfather clock, all Julia's clothes, a single-bed mattress, thirty-five novelettes, three suitcases, and a copy of a landseer stag. The customary echo was therefore lacking--"

Meet Julia Packett, "one of the most appealing, good-hearted wenches anyone has met, in the flesh or in print or on the screen..." (New York Herald) The 'Nutmeg Tree' is a charming story of love at--finally--the right time. Besides its light, frolicsome humorous side, there are some of the most fascinating peeks into the human psyche in this work . How Julia--a very resourceful woman--manages to survive on her own chiefly by knowing all about PEOPLE, is witty, entertaining, brilliant!

First edition, 1939, London, Collins

First American edition, 1939, Boston, Little, Brown and Co.

"Under the eyes of Mr. Dickens, Mr. Scott, Mr. Thackeray, and Mr. Trollope, Lisbeth Campion was engaged, as usual, in resisting advances.

'She was resisting them without harshness. That was the trouble. The earnest young man at her side meant so little to her that she could not even remember his name; she knew only that for the past two days, ever since he arrived, he had been following at her heel with a gun-dog's perseverance and a gun-dog's good manners; and indeed his whole personality was so amiably canine that Lisbeth could not help feeling it was not his fault: someone had trained him to do it..."

'Harlequin House' is a mischievous, quirky and romantic novel about young Lisbeth who has an interesting way of accomplishing her own ends. Throw into the mix her brother Ronny--who is charming but irresponsible and it takes three people to keep him in a job--an attractive American named Lester Hamilton, and...well...the astonishing Mr. Partridge.