Bessie Cotter
SMITH, Wallace
Paris: The Obelisk Press. 1936.
Description:
The first Paris Obelisk edition. 193x144mm. pp. 363, [3 adverts]. Original illustrated wrappers. A little creased (especially to spine) and soiled and slightly chipped to head and foot of spine. Internally very good. Edges uncut. Some toning but overall an excellent copy. Rare institutionally, Worldcat recording eight copies.
"Bessie Cotter was not proud of her profession, even though it was the world's oldest". As we have seen (previous item), Wallace Smith's novel, set in a Chicago brothel, was banned in England after Heinemann published it in 1935. With this pedigree, The Obelisk Press had to publish it. As Henry Miller said of the head of Obelisk, Jack Kahane, "he won't publish a thing unless it has a sensational quality, unless it might be banned in England or America. That's his strategy for the present...He hasn't much taste either, I can tell you". Ouch, and wrong in the case of Bessie Cotter which is a fine and well regarded novel. But taste probably didn't matter to Kahane, for as James Armstrong wrote in The Book Collector (Spring 2002), "Obelisk Press books are in a sense misfits".
Description:
The first Paris Obelisk edition. 193x144mm. pp. 363, [3 adverts]. Original illustrated wrappers. A little creased (especially to spine) and soiled and slightly chipped to head and foot of spine. Internally very good. Edges uncut. Some toning but overall an excellent copy. Rare institutionally, Worldcat recording eight copies.
"Bessie Cotter was not proud of her profession, even though it was the world's oldest". As we have seen (previous item), Wallace Smith's novel, set in a Chicago brothel, was banned in England after Heinemann published it in 1935. With this pedigree, The Obelisk Press had to publish it. As Henry Miller said of the head of Obelisk, Jack Kahane, "he won't publish a thing unless it has a sensational quality, unless it might be banned in England or America. That's his strategy for the present...He hasn't much taste either, I can tell you". Ouch, and wrong in the case of Bessie Cotter which is a fine and well regarded novel. But taste probably didn't matter to Kahane, for as James Armstrong wrote in The Book Collector (Spring 2002), "Obelisk Press books are in a sense misfits".