MAXIMOFF, Mateo. The Ursitory. Preface by Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. London: Chapman and Hall. 1949. Thin 8vo. First British edition. Publisher’s green cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the splendid dust jacket which goes uncredited. A very good or better example, the cloth clean and bright, the gilt lettering dulled but legible. The binding tight and square, the contents clean and fine but for a small old price in ink to front endpaper and very mild offsetting to endpapers. The dust jacket unclipped (7s 6d net), gently rubbed around the corners and spine head and tail, but a very pleasing copy of a very scarce novel.
Purportedly ‘the first novel to be written by a Gypsy’, written in 1938, when the author was held in a French prison awaiting a trial for murder, which was eventually quashed. First published in France, this, Maximoff’s most famous novel, appeared postwar with the aid of lawyer Jacques Isorni, who read his manuscript and encouraged him to write more. Maximoff came from a nomadic Romani coppersmith group known for their perpetual vagabondage, and he and his family fled to and eventually ‘settled’ in France. The novel is rooted in Romani customs, superstitions and mythology; the Ursitory are three angels of fate who appear upon the birth of a baby, who through unusual custom decide the fate of the newborn. The plot gets wilder therein. At least two other novels appeared in English, all uncommon, and this debut undoubtedly the scarcest.
MAXIMOFF, Mateo. The Ursitory. Preface by Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. London: Chapman and Hall. 1949. Thin 8vo. First British edition. Publisher’s green cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the splendid dust jacket which goes uncredited. A very good or better example, the cloth clean and bright, the gilt lettering dulled but legible. The binding tight and square, the contents clean and fine but for a small old price in ink to front endpaper and very mild offsetting to endpapers. The dust jacket unclipped (7s 6d net), gently rubbed around the corners and spine head and tail, but a very pleasing copy of a very scarce novel.
Purportedly ‘the first novel to be written by a Gypsy’, written in 1938, when the author was held in a French prison awaiting a trial for murder, which was eventually quashed. First published in France, this, Maximoff’s most famous novel, appeared postwar with the aid of lawyer Jacques Isorni, who read his manuscript and encouraged him to write more. Maximoff came from a nomadic Romani coppersmith group known for their perpetual vagabondage, and he and his family fled to and eventually ‘settled’ in France. The novel is rooted in Romani customs, superstitions and mythology; the Ursitory are three angels of fate who appear upon the birth of a baby, who through unusual custom decide the fate of the newborn. The plot gets wilder therein. At least two other novels appeared in English, all uncommon, and this debut undoubtedly the scarcest.
