Description

RARE PRESENTATION ASSOCIATION COPY OF THE DELICATE PREY, INSCRIBED BY PAUL BOWLES TO HIS BIOGRAPHER VIRGINIA SPENCER CARR

BOWLES, Paul. The Delicate Prey and Other Stories. (New York): Random House, (1950). Octavo, original rust cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of Bowles’ second short-story collection, a rare presentation/association copy inscribed on a printed preliminary leaf to his biographer Dr. Virginia Spencer Carr, dated in an early year of their close friendship, “For Dr. Carr, with my best wishes, Paul Bowles, Tangier, 14/IV/90,” this edition featuring six works first appearing in book form, including two of Bowles’ most famous stories—The Delicate Prey and Pages from Cold Point. 

Writer Tobias Wolff praised this anthology of 17 stories by Paul Bowles as “one of the most profound, beautifully wrought and haunting collections in our literature? Bowles’ tales are at once austere, witty, violent and sensuous. They move with the inevitability of myth” (Esquire). To Daniel Halpern, “Bowles’ most important book, The Delicate Prey? extended the genre of the story in a way few books have” (New York Times). Published in late 1950, one year after The Sheltering Sky, this is Bowles’ second book of stories and his first published in America. Significantly, Delicate Prey contains two stories—the title storyand ”Pages from Cold Point”—that were excluded, over fears of censorship, from a British anthology published the same year. The Delicate Prey also features another four stories first appearing in book form: “you are not i,” “How Many Midnights,” “Tea on a Mountain” and “A Thousand Days to Mokhtar.” The remaining stories initially appeared in magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle and Partisan Review from 1945-50. Recipient of this rare inscribed copy is Bowles’ biographer, Professor Virginia Spencer Carr (1922-2004), who worked closely with him for over a decade on Paul Bowles: A Life (2004), frequently traveling to Tangier to discuss the work-in-progress and finally delivering his eulogy at a memorial in Tangier in 1999.

Interior fine, slight edge-wear, small closed tear at spine head; slight edge-wear, soiling to scarce extremely good dust jacket. An exceptional presentation/association copy in near-fine condition.