REDUCED

Robert Neumann – Mammon – First UK Edition 1933

robert neumann mammon fisrt edition1

Robert Neumann – Mammon – First UK Edition 1933

Original price was: £750.00.Current price is: £375.00.

Out of stock

Original price was: £750.00.Current price is: £375.00.

A first edition, first printing published by Peter Davies in 1933. A near fine book with shadowing to the spine and a little fading to the boards – a little off-setting to the endpapers. No inscriptions. In the very scarce very good Alan Odle designed dustwrapper, with spotted staining to the spine and a small closed tear to the top of the rear panel. This is the first English translation of the Leipzig-published 1931 novel ‘Die Macht’. The entire edition was supposedly pulped by the publisher, and is described in Fromm’s 1977 biography of Richardson as “finally abandoned altogether”.
This book was Neumann’s second novel and a “savage satire”. It is full of the author’s recognized gifts for parody and black humour, and “offers the reader an only too grimly clear inside view of the curious world of International Finance, and is likely to destroy many a fond illusion”.
Robert Neumann was the son of a Jewish bank clerk with social democratic leanings. He studied medicine in Vienna and then wrote a few published works before trying a variety of other employments. His books were victim to Nazi book burnings in 1933, and were banned by the third Reich. He then decided to leave Vienna and came to England in exile early in 1934. There he lived till 1958, finally moving to Switzerland.
In original red glazed cloth, with titles to spine stamped sharp in black; fresh, unworn and undamaged; tight and square; no bumping or rubbing to extremes; internally no foxing or spotting; slightly dusty top of page-block with all edges trimmed; no ownership names or prior inscriptions.
The grotesque caricature of manipulative Mammon (Wealth & Greed) on the scarce pink pictorial jacket was designed by the accomplished and very idiosyncratic English artist, Alan Odle. The jacket is complete, undamaged, without loss, unrestored, and priced to inflap at 7/6; very faint fading of pink to backstrip, gentle rubbing at spine-ends.
The translator of the novel (Dorothy Richardson), a novelist herself, was the wife of the jacket artist (Alan Odle) in a longstanding and mutually supportive creative partnership. The rarity of the book is explained in a letter from Dorothy Richardson to Joseph Prescott, who was preparing an article on her life and work for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He related that he had been unable to locate a copy of ‘Mammon’. According to Dorothy Richardson’s reply (July 14th 1950), Neumann had approved of the translation, but believed the book had been shortened beyond the initial agreement with the publisher. He complained to Peter Davies, the publisher, “who, being very well-to-do, indulged his wrath with the translator to the extent of scrapping the whole printed edition, save only the advance copies already circulated”.


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Description

A first edition, first printing published by Peter Davies in 1933. A near fine book with shadowing to the spine and a little fading to the boards – a little off-setting to the endpapers. No inscriptions. In the very scarce very good Alan Odle designed dustwrapper, with spotted staining to the spine and a small closed tear to the top of the rear panel. This is the first English translation of the Leipzig-published 1931 novel ‘Die Macht’. The entire edition was supposedly pulped by the publisher, and is described in Fromm’s 1977 biography of Richardson as “finally abandoned altogether”.
This book was Neumann’s second novel and a “savage satire”. It is full of the author’s recognized gifts for parody and black humour, and “offers the reader an only too grimly clear inside view of the curious world of International Finance, and is likely to destroy many a fond illusion”.
Robert Neumann was the son of a Jewish bank clerk with social democratic leanings. He studied medicine in Vienna and then wrote a few published works before trying a variety of other employments. His books were victim to Nazi book burnings in 1933, and were banned by the third Reich. He then decided to leave Vienna and came to England in exile early in 1934. There he lived till 1958, finally moving to Switzerland.
In original red glazed cloth, with titles to spine stamped sharp in black; fresh, unworn and undamaged; tight and square; no bumping or rubbing to extremes; internally no foxing or spotting; slightly dusty top of page-block with all edges trimmed; no ownership names or prior inscriptions.
The grotesque caricature of manipulative Mammon (Wealth & Greed) on the scarce pink pictorial jacket was designed by the accomplished and very idiosyncratic English artist, Alan Odle. The jacket is complete, undamaged, without loss, unrestored, and priced to inflap at 7/6; very faint fading of pink to backstrip, gentle rubbing at spine-ends.
The translator of the novel (Dorothy Richardson), a novelist herself, was the wife of the jacket artist (Alan Odle) in a longstanding and mutually supportive creative partnership. The rarity of the book is explained in a letter from Dorothy Richardson to Joseph Prescott, who was preparing an article on her life and work for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He related that he had been unable to locate a copy of ‘Mammon’. According to Dorothy Richardson’s reply (July 14th 1950), Neumann had approved of the translation, but believed the book had been shortened beyond the initial agreement with the publisher. He complained to Peter Davies, the publisher, “who, being very well-to-do, indulged his wrath with the translator to the extent of scrapping the whole printed edition, save only the advance copies already circulated”.