Paris Was Yesterday 1925-1939.
Inscribed to Daphne Du Maurier
Flanner, Janet. Paris Was Yesterday 1925-1939. Edited by Irving Drutman. New York: The Viking Press, (1972).
8vo.; black cloth, stamped in gilt; red topstain; multi-colored dust-jacket; price-clipped. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of this selection of Flanner’s “Letters from Paris” written for The New Yorker between 1925 and 1939, together with material from An American in Paris: Profile of an Interlude Between Two Wars (1940). In her New Yorker column, published every two weeks and signed with the pen name “Genêt,” Flanner detailed salient artistic, social, and political events taking place in Paris during the mid-twenties and thirties. Readers relished Flanner’s witty profiles of acclaimed literary figures like Wharton, Cunard, Joyce, and Hemingway, as well as her colorful anecdotes about cultural icons such as Josephine Baker and Mae West.
A presentation copy, inscribed on the title page to Daphne du Maurier: For Daphne, who has her own legend, with my greetings, to her and her coming book Janet O[ ] 17 November 1972. Little is known about the relationship of Flanner and du Maurier, though the inscription suggests that Flanner was, at the very least, an admirer of du Maurier’s work. Most likely the novel Flanner references in her inscription was du Maurier’s last, and most politically charged book, Rule Britannia (London: Gollancz, 1972), in which she envisions what life in England would be like under the occupation of the United States.
Du Maurier (1907-1989) was born in London into a family of artists and actors who encouraged her writing from a very young age. A prolific writer, she published over two dozen novels and short story collections, as well as several biographies of figures such as Francis Bacon. Her own autobiography, Growing Pains, was completed in 1976. Many of du Maurier’s stories and novels have been adapted for the stage or for film, most notably Rebecca, which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940 and achieved both critical and commercial success. In 1969, du Maurier was honored by the British government and received the title of Dame for her distinguished literary career. Du Maurier died in 1989 in Cornwall, England, where she kept a house for much of her life, and which she chose as the setting for many of her novels and short stories.
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