STEIN, Gertrude. Wars I Have Seen. London: Batsford. 1945. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s blue cloth lettered in dark blue to the spine, in the dust jacket, a delightful wraparound inimitably designed by Cecil Beaton. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, backstrip tips a trifle pushed. The binding tight and square, the contents generally fine with just some very mild foxing to the endpapers only. Frontispiece portrait of Stein by Beaton, and another three plates of Stein at Billignen, again by Beaton. The dust jacket unclipped (15s net), a trifle rubbed at spine corners and tips, some light spots to the flaps, but a very pleasing copy overall.
The author’s legendary record in defiance of war, full of ‘workaday accounts of the struggle for existence and the search for food’ in the fight for liberation under the Nazi Occupation of France, Stein, partner Alice B. Toklas, and their poodle, Basket, remaining in Paris throughout. Idiosyncratically written, it endures not solely as a report of the Second World War in France, but of despair and hope, of tragedy and humour, in times of wars Stein experienced; ones she read about, heard about, witnessed first-hand, imagined wars, and wars yet to come. Malcolm Cowley described reading it as ‘as if a squad of Germans were quartered in your own kitchen and the Maquis were prowling the roads outside your door.’ (New York Times).
STEIN, Gertrude. Wars I Have Seen. London: Batsford. 1945. 8vo. First edition, first printing. Publisher’s blue cloth lettered in dark blue to the spine, in the dust jacket, a delightful wraparound inimitably designed by Cecil Beaton. A near fine copy, the cloth clean and bright, backstrip tips a trifle pushed. The binding tight and square, the contents generally fine with just some very mild foxing to the endpapers only. Frontispiece portrait of Stein by Beaton, and another three plates of Stein at Billignen, again by Beaton. The dust jacket unclipped (15s net), a trifle rubbed at spine corners and tips, some light spots to the flaps, but a very pleasing copy overall.
The author’s legendary record in defiance of war, full of ‘workaday accounts of the struggle for existence and the search for food’ in the fight for liberation under the Nazi Occupation of France, Stein, partner Alice B. Toklas, and their poodle, Basket, remaining in Paris throughout. Idiosyncratically written, it endures not solely as a report of the Second World War in France, but of despair and hope, of tragedy and humour, in times of wars Stein experienced; ones she read about, heard about, witnessed first-hand, imagined wars, and wars yet to come. Malcolm Cowley described reading it as ‘as if a squad of Germans were quartered in your own kitchen and the Maquis were prowling the roads outside your door.’ (New York Times).
