Under a Glass Bell

Anaïs Nin

WITH ENGRAVINGS BY IAN HUGO

First British Commonwealth edition, 1968

This edition is in excellent condition. The only signs of wear are on the dust jacket, which contains a few light scratches and rubbings. The book itself, however, is as good as new, as are the Hugo engravings.

Edmund Wilson writes: 'The pieces in this collection belong to a peculiar genre sometimes cultivated by Virginia Woolf. They are half short stories, half dreams, and they mix a sometimes exquisite poetry with a homely realistic observation. They take place in a special world of feminine perception and fancy, which is all the more curious and charming for being innocently international. In Miss Nin's case, the imagery ... is always appropriate. The spun glass is also alive: it is the abode of a secret creature. Half woman, half childlike spirit, she shops, employs servants, wears dresses, suffers the pains of childbirth, yet is likely at any moment to be volatilized into a superterrestrial being who feels things that we cannot feel ... "The Mouse", "Under the Glass Bell", "Ragtime", and "Birth" are really beautiful.'

Anaïs Nin was born in Paris in 1903. Her first book was published in the 1930s, and she went on to write stories and a series of autobiographical novels, as well as her celebrated volumes of erotica. Perhaps best known for her Journals, her personal life and loves have attracted considerable attention -- partly through her association with Henry Miller and his wife but also because for a number of years she was married to two men at the same time, with neither finding out until after her death in 1977.