MIRBEAU, Octave. Torture Garden. Trans. from the French by Alvah C. Bessie. With a foreword by James Huneker. New York: Claude Kendall. 1931. 8vo. First English language edition. Publisher’s quarter black cloth over attractive marbled paper-covered boards, lettered in gilt to the spine, and in the dust jacket designed by Jeanette Seelhoff, who also provides the vibrant endpapers and illustrations within. A near fine example, the cloth clean and bright but for small patch of discolouration to the backstrip head. The binding tight and square, the board edges just very gently bumped. The contents clean and fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($2.50), spine panel slightly faded, a few minor nicks around the joints and corners, but altogether complete and very presentable thus.
Originally published in 1899 in Paris under the title ‘Le Jardin des supplices’, Mirbeau’s most famous work took thirty two years to see an English translation, despite selling well across Europe. A satirical novel of binaries, of horror and loveliness, of humour and melancholy, witnessed via the unrestrained, very literal garden, superficially beautiful, but where torture, depravity, mutilations, flaying, and ahem, a monstrous phallus unveils itself at the hands of a malevolent, unrestricted Englishwoman, the sadist Clara. Scarce.
MIRBEAU, Octave. Torture Garden. Trans. from the French by Alvah C. Bessie. With a foreword by James Huneker. New York: Claude Kendall. 1931. 8vo. First English language edition. Publisher’s quarter black cloth over attractive marbled paper-covered boards, lettered in gilt to the spine, and in the dust jacket designed by Jeanette Seelhoff, who also provides the vibrant endpapers and illustrations within. A near fine example, the cloth clean and bright but for small patch of discolouration to the backstrip head. The binding tight and square, the board edges just very gently bumped. The contents clean and fine throughout. The dust jacket unclipped ($2.50), spine panel slightly faded, a few minor nicks around the joints and corners, but altogether complete and very presentable thus.
Originally published in 1899 in Paris under the title ‘Le Jardin des supplices’, Mirbeau’s most famous work took thirty two years to see an English translation, despite selling well across Europe. A satirical novel of binaries, of horror and loveliness, of humour and melancholy, witnessed via the unrestrained, very literal garden, superficially beautiful, but where torture, depravity, mutilations, flaying, and ahem, a monstrous phallus unveils itself at the hands of a malevolent, unrestricted Englishwoman, the sadist Clara. Scarce.
