Ludwig Lewisohn: The Case of Mr. Crump

'That word exhausts the book's horrifying and infuriating subject matter - a marriage that should never have been contracted nor would have been save for the man's weakness and youthful inexperience ... One must grant [Lewisohn] that his power to stir and entertain us is very great. His book stands in the very forefroont of modern epic narrative.”
That is what Thomas Mann wrote in his introduction. First published in Paris in 1926, The Case of Mr Crump has won a world-wide reputation for itself as a pioneering study of a dreadful marriage, the mismating of a sensitive man with a woman whose uncontrollable drive towards power makes their marriage a hell of uncomprehending hostility. So great was the impact of this book upon its publication in Europe and America that an abridged paperback edition sold over a million copies, and critics and writers from all over the world have flocked to add their testimonies of its power to those of Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser.
'The reader will remember Anne as if he had been forced to live with her for years. This is one of the most remarkable indictments of a woman in fiction' - The New York Times