LADIES ALMANACK [DAMSKI ALMANACH]

LADIES ALMANACK showing their Signs and their tides; their Moons and their Changes; the Seasons as it is with them; their Eclipses and Equinoxes; as well as full Record of diurnal and nocturnal Distempers written & illustrated by a Lady of Fashion [wł. Djuna Barnes].

„Ladies Almanack” to powieść z kluczem o lesbijskim kręgu towarzyskim paryskiej bohemy, skupionym wokół salonu Natalie Clifford Barney.

Opowieść napisana w archaicznym, rabelaisowskim stylu.

Ilustracje w stylu drzeworytów elżbietańskich wykonane przez Djunę Barnes.

Książka w języku angielskim.

Nota wydawnicza:

This extraordinary little book first came to light in Paris in 1928. Miss Barnes wrote it for fun, with no intention of ever publishing it, and happened to show it one day to another American author in Paris, Robert McAlmon. McAlmon was immediately delighted with the Almanack, and suggested, as a gift to Miss Barnes, that he have it printed for her.

Djuna Barnes’s anonymity as author was only lightly pr otected. McAlmon enthusiastically passed around the page proof at the Dôme in Paris, and her pseudonym—”A Lady of Fashion,” which she certainly is—puzzled few of the Almanack’s first readers. Once printed, fifty of the books were hand-colored by Miss Barnes and two woman helpers, and all were sold by Miss Barnes herself : $10 for the uncolored copies; $25 for the hand-colored; $50 for the ten hand-colored and signed copies.

Over the years Ladies Almanack has had a growing farne which roughly corresponds with its diminishing availability. The present edition is a facsimile, except for the binding, which in the original was paper and repeated the jacket design. Though Miss Barnes regards the book affectionately as a simple piece of fun, in no way to be considered among her serious works, it clearly bears the stamp of her inimitable genius.

Wstęp autorki do wydania z 1972 roku:

This slight satiric wigging, this Ladies Almanack, anonymously written (in an idle hour), fearfully punctuated, and privately printed (in the twenties) by Darantiere at Dijon; illustrated, with apologies to ancient chapbooks, broadsheets, and Images Populaires; sometimes coloured by the mudlark of the bankside and gamine of the quai; hawked about the faubourg and the tempie, and sold, for a penny, to the people, cherished by de Gaulle as „the indolent and terrible.”

That chronicie is now set before the compound public eye.

Neap-tide to the Proustian chronicie, gleanings from the shores of Mytilene, glimpses of its novitiates, its rising „saints” and „priestesses,” and thereon to such aptitude and insouciance that they took to gaming and to swapping that „other” of the mystery, the anomaly that calls the hidden name. That, affronted, eats its shadow.

It might be well to honour the creature slowly, that you may afford it.

Format 18,5×23 cm, stron 84, cz-b ilustracje, płócienna okładka z obwolutą.

Stan dobry (otarcia obwoluty, małe naddarcia obwoluty podklejone papierem, małe zabrudzenia stron).