The Horse's Tale
London: Gaberbocchus Press, 1949. First edition. Small 8vo, 112 pp, bound in grey cloth with rounded corners. No dust jacket, perhaps as issued.
First and only edition of Anna Kavan's rarest book, written with her psychiatrist and close friend K.T. Bluth, printed in Lübeck in a fugitive edition shortly after the end of the war. A first person plural narrative of a former circus horse who avoids the slaughter house and moves through the postwar art world. Bluth was both Kavan's psychiatrist and a lifelong friend - it was he who supplied Kavan with prescriptions of heroin, and Kavan wrote of him in several of her stories.
An atypical book from the press, printed on cheap paper in Lübeck. The book is not listed as a Gaberbocchus publication in the Themerson Archive bibliography.
Spine text dulled and only barely distinct, internal pages quite toned, as always given the paper the book was printed on, still a sturdy, very good example. Item #30122
Price: $1,500.00