Beschreibung:

BLIXEN, KAREN [=DINESEN, ISAK] Out of Africa . New York: Random House, [1938]. First edition stated (first American), inscribed on the dedication page "Isak Dinesen/ Karen Blixen/ Je Responderai/ February 1958". Publisher's cloth, in original dust jacket. 8 x 5 1/2 inches (20 x 14 cm); 389 pp. Volume split along upper joint and with rubbed spine tips and corners, endpapers toned, upper hinge loose, jacket spine lightly faded and with chips to tips not affecting text, small losses to corners and rear flap fold. Provenance: Barbara Howes and William Jay Smith (bookplate to pastedown, additionally signed by Howes on front flyleaf and with some pencil marginalia in her hand); Together with a note signed "Karen Blixen" to Mrs. Barbara (Howes) Smith, on the verso of a portrait card, thanking her gift of a book by Dorothy Canfield (who wrote the introduction to Out of Africa). The poet Barbara Howes visited Baroness Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen at her home, Rungstedlund, in Denmark in 1958. The next year, her husband, the poet William Jay Smith, introduced Dinesen at the Poetry Center of the 92nd St. Y in New York, where she gave three readings to packed houses. William Jay Smith later wrote the introduction for the 1983 book The Pact: My Friendship with Isak Dinesen. An extremely rare inscribed first edition of a major literary high spot. We find no inscribed copies of this title in the auction record. Towards the end of her life, Blixen adopted the enigmatic motto belonging to the family crest of her great love Denys Finch-Hatton, Je Responderai. C