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Pitt, Roxane. The courage of fear. London: Rider and Company, 1956. Proof copy, with the 'Foreword' page titled but empty. Paperback, Good. Orange card covers with slight damage to base of spine. Binding strong. ix, 242pp. Mild foxing to edges of page block. Contents clean and bright. "Roxane Pitt has been widely read and widely quoted thanks to her books about her activities during the Second World War. Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart wrote in his foreword, "I nearly always refuse to write prefaces for books. On this occasion I do so because this book bears the stamp of truth on every page and becasue I think it will move others as it moved me." Pitt's fiction is still often taken as fact, as can be seen in the 1992 academic anthology Visions of War: World War II in Popular Literature and Culture edited by M. Paul Holsinger and Mary Anne Schofield. Co-editor Schofield, in an essay ironically entitled "Telling the Truth: Women Spy Narratives of the Second World War", equally ironically notes: Of all the stories of female spies told by women, Roxanne (sic) Pitt's account, The Courage of Fear, is the closest to the proverbial one that everyone thinks is the "true" spy account. It clearly defines the use and misuse of sex in the field . as well as "romance"; indeed, her account is dogged by masculine advances that she does not want and does not understand. Ultimately, she uses romance as one of her many covers. And yet, despite the sexual overtones, her entire account is written to expose, rather than glorify, the glamour of spying. Nigel West, in The Historical Dictionary of Sexspionage (aka The A to Z of Sexspionage, 2009) identifies Pitt's first book as an early example of fabricated tales mixing seduction and espionage. Plenty of women have been willing to write books in which they invented espionage adventures during World War II for themselves. Elizabeth Denham started the genre with I Looked Right in 1956, describing her infiltration into Nazi-occupied France, and was followed by Roxane Pitt, who wrote The Courage of Fear in 1957 and Operation Double Life in 1975, recalling her clandestine assignments in Italy. RightWayUp Books aims to provide accurate and detailed descriptions. All images are of the actual book for sale - no stock images are ever used. Thank you for looking at this listing.
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