Ryder. Boxed with redesigned second printing (#5052).
Barnes, Djuna. Ryder. With Illustrations by the Author. New York: Horace Liveright, 1928.
8vo.; blue cloth; spine faded; top edge dampstained; dust-jacket; extremities chipped. In a specially made cloth slipcase with the redesigned second printing.
Together with:
Barnes, Djuna. Ryder. With Illustrations by the Author. New York: Horace Liveright, 1928.
8vo.; frontispiece and eight other illustrations by Barnes; blue cloth; dust-jacket; spine faded, wear to extremities, lightly rubbed. In a specially made cloth slipcase, together with the above first printing inscribed to Edward Titus.
The first edition together with a copy of the redisgned second printing. First edition, 3000 copies, as stated on the copyright page. A presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper: To Edward W. Titus Sincerely Djuna Barnes August 29 --'28 Paris--. The inscription dates to the publication not just of Ryder, but also of Barnes’s infamous Ladies Almanack. Titus was originally slated to bring out the book; Hugh Ford reports that “[a]n early announcement of the book, a facsimile of the title page, bears the imprint of the Black Manikin” (Published in Paris, p. 132). Proprietor of a librairie—At the Sign of the Black Manikin—and backed by his wife Helena Rubinstein’s cosmetic fortune, Titus brought out works by some of the most experimental writers in 1920s Paris under the Black Manikin imprint. The most notable among them is Lady Chatterly’s Lover (1929) by D.H. Lawrence; other authors include Ralph Cheever Dunning, Ludwig Lewisohn, William Van Wyck, Morley Callaghan, and Kiki. As of this August 29 inscription, it seems likely he was still planning to add Barnes to his list, but when he demanded more than Barnes could give in terms of bookselling and publication rights, she withdrew the manuscript. Her biographer Andrew Field suggests that she took “revenge” on her would-be publisher by naming a character in the Almanack Titus.
First edition, second printing, issued in September 1928. Messerli 4 [for the first printing, one month earlier]. With an example of the very uncommon art deco dust-jacket redesigned to aid flagging sales: the nude female silhouette on the front cover, and the review excerpts on the inner flaps, are clearly intended to capture the attention of consumers. The reconfigured jacket apparently only appears on later copies of the second printing. An advertising leaflet loosely inserted into the book names the publisher as Boni & Liveright, although in August 1928—the month of Ryder’s initial publication—the firm, undergoing financial restructuring, reincorporated as Horace Liveright.
(#3702 / #5052)
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