Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
NIN, Anaïs.. The House of Incest.. Paris: Siana Editions, 1936, 1936.
Price: US$3849.80 + shipping
Description: First edition, first printing, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Rebecca and Henry, with affection, Anaïs, Paris 1936". This edition comprised 249 copies, all numbered and signed by the author: this is number 67. It was Nin's "first, best, and most challenging volume of prose fiction" (Franklin and Schneider). The recipient was Nin's friend Rebecca West, the author and critic hailed as "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" by Time in 1947, and her husband, the banker Henry Maxwell Andrews. West's literary opinions were strongly held and sharply worded. She called Tolstoy the "most bogus great writer of all time", declared "I am dead to Dante", and dismissed H. G. Wells (the father of her child) as "the old maid among novelists" (Rollyson, p. 10) Her friend and colleague at the Evening Standard once told her that she had the reputation of a "hell-cat with a tongue made of broken bottles and dipped in acid" (ibid.) Nin's diaries often refer to West, including a recollection of their first encounter. West had written to Nin praising her first published work, D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932) and invited her to visit London. Nin accepted, and an intense friendship blossomed. "I liked her immediately", recalled Nin, "her warmth, her brilliant dark eyes, her wit. She visited me in Louveciennes. We talked so much together we lost our way in the forest and had to telephone to a friend to come and pick us up in a car. In Louveciennes she commented that she had never seen a house where deep talks could be treated so lightly." (vol. 2, 1966, p. 31ff). Despite their mutual admiration, their friendship cooled, in large part because of Nin's long-term relationship with Henry Miller. West despised Miller as both a writer and a person. "She first met him in Paris in Anaïs Nin's apartment. Rebecca happened to be passing the bathroom and heard a gurgling sound. She opened the door and there was Henry Miller committing suicide by drowning himself in the bathtub. 'So I pulled the plug and walked out,' Rebecca confided to a friend. 'You know, he never thanked me'" (Rollyson, ibid.). The House of Incest is a prose poem, "a book of dreams, fantasies, half-realities, visions, interior monologues, and journeys; an esoteric description of a progress through experiences and relationships that actually represent the unnamed narrator dealing with her own multifaceted self" (Franklin and Schneider, p. 4). Wendy M. DuBow, Conversations with Anaïs Nin, 1994; Benjamin Franklin & Duane Schneider, Anaïs Nin: An Introduction, 1979; Carl Rollyson, Rebecca West and the God That Failed, 2005. Tall octavo. Original cream wrappers lettered in black, edges untrimmed. With original glassine. Spine ends slightly bumped and chipped, short closed tear at head of front joint; glassine a little chipped with a few faint marks: a near-fine copy in like glassine.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom
Price: US$4782.97 + shipping
Description: Paris, Siana Editions, 1936. 4°. 89 Seiten, 2 Bl. OUmschlag. Erste Ausgabe. - Anais Nins erster Roman - ein ausgedehntes Prosa-Gedicht - wurde mit Unterstützung von Michael Fraenkel und Alfred Perles auf ihrer eigenen Presse gedruckt. - Eins von nur 249 numerierten Exemplaren. Vorliegendes Buch with handwritten dedication to /mit Widmung an die in Paris lebende amerikanischen Autorin Kay Boyle: "To Kay Boyle, "the fear of madmen will burn down the walls of our secret house and send us out into the world." Anais Nin, Paris 1937." Beide Frauen waren Schlüsselfiguren der Literatur- und Kunstszene, die in den 30er Jahren so viele Amerikaner nach Paris zog. - An den Rändern etwas angedunkelt, einige kleine Fleckchen auf dem Umschlag (hinten), sonst sehr schönes Exemplar. - One of 249 numbered copies of the true first edition of Nin's second book, first novel, signed by the author. A surreal novel looseley based on Nin's ménage à trois with Henry and June Miller and her incestous relationship with her father. Jack Kahane, publisher of the Obelisk Press - which had published Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" two years earlier - turned down the book, and Nin set up her own inprint, Siana Editions (Anais backward!), with the help of Miller, Michael Fraenkel and Alfred Perlès. Although the limitation page indicates 249 copies signed by the author, years after the publication Nin sold the last hundered copies, unsigned, to American underground publisher Sam Abramson, meaning that fewer than 150 copies of the edition were numbered and signed by Nin. A nice, near fine copy with near fine d/j of this large, fragile association copy we have ever seen. Sprache: Englisch. *** Bitte kontaktieren Sie mich immer BEVOR Sie bestellen! Für ausführliche Beschreibungen und Bilder sowie günstigere Versandoptionen kontaktieren Sie mich bitte per Email! Please contact me always BEFORE you order! For detailled descriptions and photos as well as cheaper shipping options please send an email! ***
Seller: Antiquariat CoBrA, Oberrohrbach, Austria