DINESEN, Isak [Karen Blixen]; edited by Clara Svendsen.

Isak Dinesen: A Memorial.

First Edition of Clara Svendsen's Isak Dinesen: A Memorial; From the Library of Glenway Wescott

New York: Random House, 1965.

$175.00

In Stock Item Number: RRB-145708

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First edition of this tribute to the life of the brilliant Danish writer Karen Blixen, a collection of essays from her friends compiled by her secretary and companion Clara Svendsen. Octavo, original black cloth, green endpapers. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Bookplate to the front free endpaper of "Glenway Wescott" with a notation of the page his entry appears. Wescott was an expatriate American poet, novelist, and essayist who met Blixen in 1959 on her way to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In his entry, he writes, "Though I was not one of Isak Dinesen's old or close or important friends ... at the news of her death I wept miserably."

Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke was a supremely talented Danish author who is known under multiple pen names: Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries; Tania Blixen, used in German-speaking countries; Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel. Dinesen's early years were strongly influenced by her father's relaxed manner and his love of the outdoor life and hunting. After his death and longing for the enviroment he created, she found some release in telling her younger sister Ellen hair-raising good-night stories, partly inspired by Danish folk tales and Icelandic sagas. Engaged at 28, Blixen left for Kenya, the site of her second and most well-known book, 'Out of Africa,' which she would write upon her return to Denmark eighteen years later. For her literary accomplishments, Blixen was awarded the Danish Holberg Medal in 1949, the Ingenio et Arti medal in 1952, granted the inaugural Hans Christian Andersen Scholarship of the Danish Writers Association in 1955 and received the Henrik Pontoppidan Memorial Foundation Grant in 1959. She was considered several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but ultimately did not receive it because judges were reportedly concerned about showing favoritism to Scandinavian writers.