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Crane. Following Harry’s death in 1929 (he was found shot in the same bed as Josephine, “The Fire Princess”, one of his many lovers), Caresse continued issuing books in Paris and New York, publishing her memoir The Passionate Years in 1953, and surviving until 1970. This copy is in wrappers, as opposed to Minkoff’s leather binding. Octavo. Original white wrappers, titles black to spine and front cover, rose motif to front cover. With glassine jacket. Housed in a custom black cloth chemise and black quarter morocco slipcase, red spine labels. Illustrated with pochoir-coloured plates and vignettes by Daniel Girard. A clean, square copy, single nick to foot of spine, wrappers lightly toned, a few spots of foxing to top edge, trivial offsetting to “Harry” title page, else free from creasing and marks, near-fine. ¶ Not in Minkoff, see A2 for first edition in leather binding. £2,750 [153112] 19 CROSBY, Harry. Sonnets for Caresse. Paris: Albert Messein, Editeur, 7 October 1926 Presentation copy of the most complete edition of Harry Crosby’s first book, inscribed by Crosby to Helenka Adamowski Pantaleoni, “Helenka from Harry Paris MCMXXVII”. This copy is number 23 of 100 copies on Arches paper, with the original wrappers bound in to the hand- painted vellum as issued. There were a further seven copies issued on japon, and one on vellum. Pantaleoni (1900–1987) was a renowned actress and intellectual who founded the US Fund for UNICEF and served as the president of the US Committee for UNICEF from 1953 until her retirement in 1978. Pantaleoni met Crosby at Harvard when he was there as a student after the First World War. She remembered him at this time as “an incredibly sensitive, high- strung, poetic individual” (Wolff, p. 68). Sonnets for Caresse was first printed in October 1925 and marked the beginning of Crosby’s extraordinary literary love
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18 CROSBY, Caresse. Crosses of Gold. A Book of Verse.
Paris: Léon Pichon [Black Sun Press], 1925 Caresse and Harry’s own copy
First edition, out of series from a limited issue of 100, the Crosby’s own copy with Caresse and Harry’s gilt-tooled bookplate incorporating their “Crosby Cross” (with their names crossed over one another at the “R”). Crosses of Gold was one of the first two books published by the Crosbys, and the first to incorporate the Crosby cross, in Caresse’s printed dedication to herself and her beloved Harry. Harry and Caresse Crosby were a wild and wealthy couple of expatriate Americans in Paris between the wars, who embedded themselves in the avant-garde cultural scene. They befriended the likes of Dalí and Hemingway, and founded the Black Sun Press which published Joyce, Eliot, Pound, and Hart
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INEXHAUSTIBLE LIFE
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