The Garden Party and Other Stories (Limited Edition)

MANSFIELD, Katherine. The Garden Party, and Other Stories. With Coloured Lithographs by Marie Laurencin. London: The Verona Press, 1939 [but published 1947].

Large 8vo. Original publisher's patterned green and cream cloth, gilt titling to spine on red panel. Title page printed in orange and black. [xii], 316, [2] pp., illustrated with 16 colour lithographs by Marie Laurencin throughout. Fore and bottom edges untrimmed. Publisher's note tipped in on tan paper following copyright page. Dust jacket. Slipcase. Limited edition, number 534 of 1200 copies. First edition thus. Printed at the Officina Bodoni, Verona, in Centaur type, on handmade paper. Designed by Hans Mardersteig. 

Katherine Mansfield died in January 1923, aged thirty-four, having contracted tuberculosis during the First World War. She left behind four published collections of short stories and a reputation as one of the transforming figures of literary modernism. Virginia Woolf, not given to easy admiration, admitted that Mansfield's was the only writing she had ever been jealous of.

This volume, printed in 1939 at Giovanni Mardersteig's legendary Officina Bodoni press in Verona, among the most distinguished private presses of the twentieth century, was intended as a gathering of the best of her work across her entire career, and its contents deliberately differ from those of the 1922 collection published under the same title. The outbreak of war prevented its distribution; the edition sat unissued for eight years, finally reaching the public in 1947 through William Collins.

The sixteen colour lithographs are the work of Marie Laurencin, the French painter and printmaker who moved in the circle of Picasso and the Cubists and whose distinctive palette of soft greys, roses, and blues proves an unexpectedly apt companion to Mansfield's prose. The combination of these two women's sensibilities, mediated by one of the great printers of the age, produces a book of unusual beauty and emotional coherence.

Near fine in a good dust jacket and slipcase. Slipcase shelf work to edges, some minor staining along lower face. Jacket shows a chip to the spine foot, some creasing along edges, and some chipping to the front fold-over crease. Volume excellently preserved and presenting beautifully. Some scattered markings to contents; otherwise fresh and bright throughout.

Catalogue Number: HH000151