Description

LAST TALES, INSCRIBED BY ISAK DINESEN

DINESEN, Isak. Last Tales. New York: Random House, (1957). Octavo, original gray cloth, original dust jacket.

First American edition (published simultaneously with the English edition) of one of Dinesen’s final works, inscribed, “Isak Dinesen. New York 4.3. 1959. With all good wishes.”

To Eudora Welty, Last Tales ‘may be the literary testament of one of the most skilled but least prolific writers of the 20th century? True to Dinesen’s credo of the storyteller’s story, [yet]? also extremely personal in their point of view, in their great style? her tales are glimpses out of, rather than into, an extraordinary mind (New York Times Book Review). To John Updike, Dinesen’s “fiction especially suggests that of Hemingway, who thought well enough of her to interrupt his Nobel Price acceptance speech with a regret that she had not received it” (New York Times). Published only five years before her death in 1962, Last Tales contains 12 short stories, including two “New Gothic Tales,” three “New Winter’s Tales” and seven chapters from her unfinished novel Albondocani. Published same year as first English edition, no priority established. Text fine, very lightest toning to edges of original cloth; dust jacket fine and bright. A lovely, fine copy, scarce inscribed.