the secretive Cambridge fraternity the Conversazione Society. In late 1920 James and his wife Alix ( née Sargant-Florence) settled in Vienna to undertake psychological analysis from Freud himself. “During the first weeks of their analysis Freud asked James and Alix to translate some of his recent works into English, a request which signalled the beginning of one of the most heroic undertakings in the history of psychoanalysis” ( ODNB ). This culminated in their 24-volume Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1953–74), published by the Hogarth Press. Freud’s autobiographical study was printed in a run of 1,768 copies and was number 26 in the International Psycho-Analytical Library, which the Hogarth Press acquired in 1924. Leonard Woolf writes “the greatest pleasure that I got from publishing the Psycho-Analytical Library was the relationship which it established between us and Freud . . . He was not only a genius, but also, unlike many geniuses, an extraordinarily nice man” (p. 166). In the postscript, Freud complains that the earlier, US publication of Strachey’s translation “was injudiciously brought out in the same volume as another essay of mine which gave its title, The Problem of Lay-Analyses (1927), to the whole book and so obscured the present work” (p. 131). It was originally printed as “Selbstdarstellung” (“Self-presentation”) in Die Medizin der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (1925), a series which aimed to provide a contemporary survey of the field of medicine through the autobiographies of its leading practitioners. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered gilt. With dust jacket. Half-tone frontispiece. Cloth bright, foxing to edges and outer leaves, otherwise clean. A near-fine copy in lightly faded dust jacket, exempting bright flaps, not price- clipped, spine toned, shallow loss at head, a few marks and couple of short closed tears, nevertheless remarkably sharp. ¶ Woolmer 367. Leonard Woolf, Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919–1939 , 1967. £1,750 [157204] 63 FREUD, Sigmund – STRUCK, Hermann. Etched portrait of Sigmund Freud. [Leipzig: Friedrich Dehne, 1920] signed by freud A striking portrait of the father of psychoanalysis by German-Jewish artist Hermann Struck, signed in pencil by both sitter and artist in the lower margin,
numbered lower right 13/150. Freud praised the work as a flattering but “charming idealization”, noting Struck’s quiet erasure of signs of encroaching age. Struck (1876–1944) drew this portrait from life in 1914; the etching is monogrammed and dated in the plate lower left “HS ✡ 1914”, following the artist’s convention. Writing to Struck in November 1914, Freud appeared wryly pleased with the flattering likeness: “This is how I should like to look, and I may even be on the way there, but it seems to me I have got stuck halfway. Everything that is shaggy and angular about me you have made smooth and rounded . . . You have put my parting on one side . . . Furthermore my hairline runs across the temple in a rather concave curve. By rounding it off you have greatly improved upon it. Very likely this correction was intentional. In a word, I feel the etching to be a great honor. Each time I look at it I like it better” ( Letters , p. 306). This example is from the deluxe issue of the Köpfe 1920 portfolio, with the date “1920” added faintly underneath Struck’s etched monogram. The portfolio comprises a series of 12 portrait etchings of notable figures. It was published in a numbered edition of 150, with each print signed by its respective artist. Those numbered 1–50 form the deluxe issue, with each print bearing the additional signature of the sitter. Six of the etchings are by Struck (portraits of Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Heine, Arno Holz, Lovis Corinth, and Max Reinhardt, in addition to Freud) and one apiece by the artists Eduard Einschlag, Bedřich Feigl, Ivo Hauptmann, Ernst Oppler, Robert Friedrich Karl Scholtz, and Walter Zeising. After studying at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, Struck became part of the Berlin Secession movement, specializing in etching and publishing a seminal textbook, Die Kunst des Radierens (“The Art of Etching”, 1908). His pupils included Marc Chagall, Lovis Corinth, and Max Liebermann. In addition to Freud, Struck captured the likenesses of other leading figures such as Albert Einstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Henrik Ibsen, and Theodor Herzl. He was one of the founders of the orthodox-Zionist Misrachi party in Germany and in 1922 emigrated to Palestine. Etching on watermarked laid paper. Image size: 14.2 × 10.2 cm. Sheet size: 28.3 × 22.8 cm. Framed size: 420 × 350 mm. Margins lightly foxed, lower left margin with small paper repair and washed, lower right corner faintly creased, otherwise a very good impression. ¶ Ernst L. Freud, ed., Letters of Sigmund Freud , 1992. £10,000 [158037]
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62 FREUD, Sigmund. An Autobiographical Study. Authorized Translation by James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1935 with the rare dust jacket First British edition, in the scarce dust jacket, which is seldom encountered in such attractive condition. This edition prints new material by Freud, including his alterations to the text, additional footnotes, and a postscript; the latter covers the events of his life since the first German publication a decade earlier. The translator and psychoanalyst James Strachey (1887–1967) was the younger brother of Lytton Strachey and, alongside Leonard Woolf, a member of
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