Out of Africa.

First American edition. Octavo, original cloth. Inscribed on the dedication page by the author "Isak Dinesen/ Karen Blixen/ Je Responderai/ February 1958." Barbara Howes and William Jay Smith (bookplate to pastedown, additionally signed by Howes on front flyleaf). Also laid in is a note signed "Karen Blixen" to Mrs. Barbara (Howes) Smith, on the verso of a portrait card, thanking her gift of a book by Dorothy Canfield (who wrote the introduction to Out of Africa). The poet Barbara Howes visited Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen at her home, Rungstedlund, in Denmark in 1958. The next year, her husband, the poet William Jay Smith, introduced Dinesen at the Poetry Center of the 92nd St. Y in New York, where she gave three readings to packed houses. William Jay Smith later wrote the introduction for the 1983 book "The Pact: My Friendship with Isak Dinesen." Howes read this book, with the cloth showing considerable wear, still a good copy in a very good dust jacket with some chips to the spine. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Inscribed first editions are rare.