the
handsack press issue of
Memoirs
of a Booklegger
$45.00
MEMOIRS OF A BOOKLEGGER by Jack
Kahane (ISBN 978-0-615-18564-4).
with a Foreword by Juliette
Kahane
This is a copy of JACK KAHANE's (founder of the OBELISK
PRESS in PARIS) autobiography, MEMOIRS OF A BOOKLEGGER. MEMOIRS OF A
BOOKLEGGER was originally published in a limited quantity in 1939. Copies
are rare, and if found, are very expensive. This recently published volume
(2006 by the handsack press) contains the text from the original 1939 edition
including the very useful index. This
is the 3rd handsack press printing and it is the first to contain an
Introductory Foreword written by Jack Kahane’s granddaughter, Juliette
Kahane. This is a book out of a 3rd
printing of 25 and is hand numbered and stamped as such. MEMOIRS OF A BOOKLEGGER recounts the life of
the colorful and eccentric man who started the OBELISK PRESS in Paris in 1931
and gave the works of HENRY MILLER to the world. From his insecure boyhood days
in Manchester, England to his successful years in the Manchester textile
industry; from his enlistment in the British Army to his being seriously
wounded in the trenches of France; from his early days as an expatriate
novelist in 1920’s Paris to his becoming a confidante, publisher, and friend to
some of the best literary minds of all time; Kahane tells his story with a mix
of drama, comedy, cynicism, and tenderness. His many and varied opinions of
women, sex, war, writers, publishers, Germans, French, Italians, Americans, and
English are often times insightful and many times infuriating. JACK KAHANE died
on September 3, 1939, just months after MEMOIRS OF A BOOKLEGGER was published
and two days after the beginning of World War II. One cannot begin to quantify
the value of the literary legacy that he left behind. Enough to say that if one
knows the name of JACK KAHANE, if one recognizes the elegant colophon of the
OBELISK PRESS, if one has felt the energy in the words of writers such as HENRY
MILLER, JAMES JOYCE, ANAIS NIN, LAWRENCE DURRELL, and D. H. LAWRENCE, then one
knows the importance of JACK KAHANE and the reasons for needing to read MEMOIRS
OF A BOOKLEGGER.
The Original – Published in 1939
$175.00
MEMOIRS OF A BOOKLEGGER by Jack
Kahane.
Michael Joseph 1939
JACK KAHANE's autobiography,
MEMOIRS OF A BOOKLEGGER published in 1939 by Michael Joseph.
287 pp., 8vo, green
cloth. Good reading or working copy of
the hard-to-find original 1st edition/1st printing. This copy has old damp-markings on covers, a
few penciled marginal notes, and it has had the front end papers, half-title
page, limitation page, and title-page removed (I do not know why). Binding is tight.
Book comes with facsimile
copy of original Dust Jacket.
Other Books about Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press
$35.00
OF OBELISKS AND DAFFODILS by James Armstrong and Gary
Miers.
OF OBELISKS AND DAFFODILS tells the complete story of
Jack Kahane and his Paris publishing company, the Obelisk Press. It brings together for the first time in one
volume an accurate and concise biography of Jack Kahane, an unprecedented and
complete Obelisk Press bibliography, a complete Jack Kahane/Cecil Barr
bibliography, a study of the literary significance and importance of the
Obelisk Press’s first issue, Kahane’s own DAFFODIL, and the final five
chapters of Kahane’s autobiography, MEMOIRS OF A BOOKLEGGER (in which
Kahane tells in his own words the story of his becoming a publisher and of his
founding the Obelisk Press).
Published in a limited first edition/first printing
quantity of 200 copies by the handsack press, this is a book from that series
and is numbered as such. The book is
signed by Miers on the front flap opposite the title page.
During the years that Kahane operated the Obelisk
Press, from 1931 until his death in 1939, the Obelisk Press would publish the
major works of Henry Miller (TROPIC OF CANCER, TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, BLACK
SPRING, and MAX AND THE WHITE PHAGOCYTES), the first major work of Lawrence Durrell
(THE BLACK BOOK), work by James Joyce (HAVETH CHILDERS EVERYWHERE) work by
Anaïs Nin (THE WINTER OF ARTIFICE), and unexpurgated works of Radclyffe Hall
(THE WELL OF LONELINESS), D. H. Lawrence (LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER), and Peter
Neagoe (STORM). Yet none of these
important works of literature sold more copies in the years that Kahane
operated the Obelisk Press than did his own light novel DAFFODIL.
OF
OBELISKS AND DAFFODILS is a great resource for anyone who is interested in the
Obelisk Press.
Click Here to Read
Review of OF OBELISKS AND DAFFODILS