Eric's Story — Literary North

Imagine our surprise when we received a direct message in our Instagram account from London publisher, Eglantyne Books, a brand new publishing house specializing in rare reprints and new books. The editors at Eglantyne had written to share the novel Eric’s Story with us since the setting of the novel is Dartmouth College in nearby Hanover, New Hampshire. We had never heard of the book, though a quick Google search revealed it to be quite infamous; it had been unofficially banned in Hanover bookstores at the time of its publication.

We immediately thought of our friends at Junction Magazine and wrote to the editors about the author, Bravig Imbs (aka Eric), and the ensuing fallout from the publication of the novel. Isaac Lorton spoke to Professor James Dobson of the Dartmouth English Department and Olivia and Robert Temple of Eglantyne to learn more about this story. We’re grateful to Isaac and Junction for letting us feature an excerpt of his story on our website.

Thank you, also, to Eglantyne Books for sending three copies of this novel across the pond to us.

Perhaps your winter reading needs a humorous, gossipy account of tea parties packed to the gills with eccentric Dartmouth professors and townspeople (and sometimes literary luminaries such as Robert Frost or Gertrude Stein). Eric’s Story, originally published as The Professor’s Wife, is full of tiny details about life in Hanover in the 1920s, plus you’ll meet a scoundrel of a dog, many accomplished musicians, and a butler who is a fly on the wall throughout it all, reporting back all he sees and hears.

We think you’ll want to get your hands on a copy, stat! Copies can be purchased through Eglantyne Books online.

Thank you to Isaac and Junction Magazine for allowing us to share the following excerpt from their article. Read the whole thing over at Junction!

Excerpt from Eric’s Story, by Isaac Lorton

Originally published in 1928, The Professor’s Wife takes an intimate and satirical look at the daily lives of the head of the English department, Professor Myron Ramson, and his wife, Delia Ramson, and the social intricacies of an unnamed college town, through the eyes of the English house butler and college student, Eric. While attending Dartmouth, Imbs was a live-in butler for the head of the Dartmouth English department, Professor David Lambuth, and his wife Myrtle Lambuth, in exchange for room and board, and according to Mrs. Ramson in the story, “all the cultural advantages of her home.”

“We found the book The Professor’s Wife and we just loved it!” Olivia says. “It’s so funny. It grabs you from the very first page. You can’t put it down. I’m not American. It doesn’t really mean anything to me – Dartmouth. Yet, I was absolutely there. It’s all priceless. [Imbs] is so clever to write it all down from the word go because if he’d written it in retrospect, not from a diary which I presume he kept, he couldn’t have remembered all that detail. The whole atmosphere about the house, and especially the professor’s wife. She was a nightmare, wasn’t she?”