The Angelic Avengers by Pierre Andrézel - 1946

Random House, 1946. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Good/No Jacket. 304 pages. The author more frequently used the pen name Isak Dinesen. This is the first English (American) edition of novel - set in 19th-century England - published in Danish as Gengældelsens Veje (Ways of Retaliation) in 1944 during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. Dinesen acknowledged her authorship only a decade later, stating that she had written the novel merely "to amuse myself"; but the English editions have an epigraph (impossible to publish in the Danish version" from within the book: "You serious people must not be too hard on human beings for what they choose to amuse themselves with when they are shut up as in a prison and not even allowed to say that they are prisoners. If I do not soon get a little bit of fun, I shall die." 8vo, beige cloth with knockout lettering on black inlaid box on spine, gilt drawing on front, decorative black border on front board, light shelf wear, boards soiled… Read More

New York: Random House, 1947. First American edition. 402 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Blue cloth. Fine, in Near Fine dust jacket. First American edition. 402 pp. 1 vols. 8vo.

London: Putnam & Co Ltd, 1946. First edition in English. 303 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Red cloth. Fine, in Near Fine pictorial dust jacket by Michael Wickham (some light toning). Pencil ownership of Claude (cartoonist Calude Smith). First edition in English. 303 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. In the Dust Jacket. The front flap of the jacket introduces the author as "a young Frenchman, born in Rouen in 1915, and educated at Oxford". The author portrait looks like it dates from before the birth of the "author". The back flap advertises "Out of Africa" by Karen Blixen. "Hard to say now who exactly knew and when they did, that Pierre Andrezel - author of Gengaeldelsens Veje (1944), a Danish novel soon translated as The Angelic Avengers (1946) - was yet another pseudonym of Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (1885-1962), who wrote mainly as Isak Dinesen. She was also known as Karen Blixen. She herself did not explicitly admit to the book until an interview for The Paris Review in 1956. But the secret wouldn't have been… Read More