"Published May, 1907" on copyright page; Grosset & Dunlap publishers, New York; hardbound; on inside board: "Gift of The People of the United States Through the Victory Book Campaign (A.L.A. - A.R.C. - U.S.O.) To the Armed Forces and Merchant Marine"; very good condition of unmarked pages with tight binding; boards very good except for very small tear on spine top - see pic; no dust jacket.
 
Description -
Alice-for-short, by William De Morgan (1907). The scene of this story is laid in London, where Alicia Kavanagh, called Alice-for-short, is introduced as a neglected child overwhelmed with grief at the breaking of a beer-jug with which she is returning to her drunken mother. The child is befriended by Charles Heath, a young artist whose studio proves to be in the same house in which the Kavanagh family occupy the cellar. A drunken brawl ensues in which Kavanagh first kills his wife and then takes poison, after which the frightened child is conveyed by the artist to his own London home where his family adopt her. His sister Peggy devotes herself to the sick and exhausted Alice and later falls in love with Rupert Johnson, the young doctor who comes to tend the child. Eventually the doctor risks his life to rescue Alice from a perilous fall over a cliff, and Peggy, who has frowned upon his suit, relents, owns that she loves him, and their marriage takes place...