Vanity's Price

According to family legend, in every generation of the Ainslie family one child is born heartless, 'in sad and bitter memory of a beautiful ancestress' who 'played fast and loose with men's hearts' and so neglected her baby daughter that the poor infant died.

Clarice Ainslie is utterly heartless; she cares for nobody but herself. She is also terrified of everything old and determined to remain young forever, so she agrees to become the guinea pig for Dr Head's 'Arrested Age' experimental treatment. Far from being put off by the extremely high financial cost of the treatment, the doctor's frank description of what she will have to endure-including the removal of all her teeth and virtual imprisonment within his home-or the length of time it will take to complete the process, Clarice forges ahead without giving any of it much thought. But there is a price to pay for such obsessive vanity... and it is a high one.

This new edition of Vanity's Price-its first republication since it first appeared in 1900-includes the biographical essay 'In Search of E. Yolland' by Gina R. Collia, which originally appeared in Mistress Bridget (Nezu Press, 2023).