The Other Elizabeth by Jess Gregg, 1952
The first novel by this gay author (who was also, intermittently, a playwright and TV dramatist), jacket-blurbed as "one of the strangest love affairs of fiction: a tale of mounting suspense and eerie psychological fascination" (and likened to du Maurier's "Rebecca"). The story concerns a young woman who goes to Boston to ghost-write the memoirs of the Baroness Elizabeth von Schillar, "a notorious turn-of-the-century Boston beauty," now aged and debt-ridden. The third "character" in the narrative is the Baroness's long-dead husband, a promising painter who died less than a year into the marriage, and "the one subject the Baroness refused to discuss." Gregg, who died in early 2009, published several more books, including a late-in-life memoir, "The Tall Boy," but never really broke through to wide success.
great collectible novel and vintage paperback.
