Souvenir de Ballet.

GRANDIER, Lydia Landon; Constantine Hassalevris [Photographer] [Raymond Chandler].

$1,500.00

Item Number: 147870

San Diego, CA: Hester & Smith, Inc, 1947.

First edition of this photographic compilation showcasing the artistry of ballet. Imperial octavo, original publisher’s cloth, frontispiece, illustrated with black and white photographs by Constantine Hassalevris. Signed by the author and the photographer on the half-title page. Presentation copy, inscribed by Raymond Chandler to Sybil, the daughter of Jean Fracasse, “For my Sybi With all my love Ray La Jolla Feb 6th 1958 – The man on page 70 is me, but I wear pants nowadays R.” Raymond Chandler was a groundbreaking American writer, best known for his creation of the hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe and his influential contributions to the noir genre. Jean Fracasse, later Vounder-Davis, was Chandler’s secretary. In near fine condition with light rubbing to the extremities and light toning.

Souvenir de Ballet (1947), compiled by Lydia Landon Grandier with photography by Constantine Hassalevris, is a visually rich tribute to the artistry of ballet. Featuring over 140 black-and-white photographs, the book captures the movement and expression of more than 100 dancers, including renowned figures such as Agnes de Mille, Alicia Markova, and Jerome Robbins. With a foreword by Anton Dolin, the work contextualizes the significance of ballet as both a performance art and a cultural tradition. Grandier’s curation, paired with Hassalevris’s dynamic imagery, preserves the ephemeral beauty of dance, making Souvenir de Ballet a valuable historical and artistic document within the field of dance studies.