Winter of Artifice, Anais Nin. Signed First American Edition.
“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”
~Anais Nin
I posted this one a few months back, but since I've gained a few new followers and it's such an awesome piece, I figured I'd post it again. Anais Nin was an American diarist, essayist, and writer of novels and short stories. She is known primarily for her works of erotica, considered the first prominent erotica writer in the West to explore the female side. Her journals, the published ones being from 1933 onward, are also well-known. She was acquainted, often intimately, with a number of important writers, novelists, psychoanalysts, and other figures, and detailed these relationships in her journals. Among those included were Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Antonin Artaud, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal, James Agee, James Leo Herlihy, and Lawrence Durrell. An interesting diary indeed!
Winter of Artifice is Nin's second book, containing several novelettes. This is the first American edition, limited to 500 copies, hand printed by Nin and her lover Gonzalo Moré, with copper engravings by her husband Ian Hugo. Wonderfully inscribed by Nin on the flyleaf to fellow writer Leon Pierre Quint, whom she credits as an inspiration for her early work. Originally published in 1939 under the Obelisk Press imprint, most of those copies were destroyed upon the death of the publisher and the beginning of the war. It's a beauty.
Nin's inscription:
Nin:
More info here:
Ah come on! Now you've done it. Anais Nin is up there with Tetris on my list of addictions I've outgrown. Now you tell me there's something I haven't read. Sigh.. : )
Haha! Glad I can feed your addictions!
Wow. The book/the woman sounds really interesting. Quite an impressive list of "acquaintances" haha
Much respect for Anais. A big influence growing up.
Wow, that really is a treasure. I can only imagine what it's worth. Do you keep it locked up behind glass?
When I was growing up, my mother had the slender volume of Little Birds among all the other books she'd inherited. I don't think she knew what it was about, but around the age of 12 or 13, I sure did. Although the story about the woman getting fucked from behind while watching a public execution and coming at the moment the gallows dropped may have disturbed me a little.
Haha, that's a great story. No glass, classic bookshelf but I have mylar wraps around the books, a dehumidifier, all that good stuff!