Last Tales.

First edition of this classic collection of short stories. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by the author on the half-title page, "Isak Dinesen Je Responderai." While in Africa, Blixen took as her motto “Je Responderai,” “I will answer,” from the family crest of her lover, Denys Finch-Hatton. She explained: “I liked this old motto so much that I asked Denys, an earlier pioneer in African than myself – although all we settlers who had come out before the war looked upon ourselves as one family, a kind of Mayflower people – if I might have it for my own. He generously made me a present of it and even had a seal cut for me, with the words carved on it. The device was meaningful and dear to me for many reasons, two in particular. The first of these was its high valuation of the idea of the answer in itself. For an answer is a rarer thing than is generally imagined. There are many highly intelligent people who have no answer at all in them. A conversation or a correspondence with such persons is nothing but a double monologue – you may stroke them or you may strike them, you will get no more echo from them than from a block of wood. And how, then, can you yourself go on speaking?” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Jeanyee Wong. Rare and desirable signed.