Anecdotes of Destiny.

DINESEN, Isak [Karen Blixen].

$2,000.00

Item Number: 144976

New York: Random House, 1958.

First edition of this classic collection of stories and the last to be published in her lifetime. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by Isak Dinesen on the half-title page, while on her only trip to the United States. In 1959, Dinesen had been invited by the Ford Foundation to travel to the United States to read and discuss her work as part of a film series on “the world’s greatest living writers.” Despite her failing health—the frail seventy-four-year old weighed just 80 pounds she accepted the invitation.  From the library of Bruce and Beatrice Gould. Bruce Gould and Beatrice Blackmar Gould were co-editors of the Ladies’ Home Journal for almost 27 years, from 1935 through 1962, including the golden years of the magazine. Time magazine wrote upon their 1962 retirement, the Goulds took an undistinguished journal in a field that “took the patronizing view that a woman’s interests were largely confined to the home” and led by “Beatrice’s sure feeling for the emancipated women’s tastes, it invited its readers to plunge up to the elbows not only in bread dough but in life.” The magazine pushed for “purity in politics as well as in maternity wards” and fought against venereal disease and child abuse. Attention-getting articles and addressing feminine health problems openly were published, as well as top fiction pieces.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket.

Two of the stories from the collection have been adapted into films: The Immortal Story as the 1968 film The Immortal Story directed by Orson Welles, starring Jeanne Moreau, and Babette's Feast as the 1987 Danish film Babette's Feast directed by Gabriel Axel.