Gertrude Stein, Wars I Have Seen (Cecil Beaton Dust Jacket)
Stein, Gertrude. Wars I Have Seen. First English Edition. 1945. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition—jacket shows minor fraying to the spine ends. Wraparound dust jacket illustration by Cecil Beaton.
The great modernist writer describes the wars she experienced during her lifetime, but most particularly World War II, just then coming to its conclusion. During the Nazi occupation, Stein retreated to Bilignin, her country home, and in this book, she extols the virtues of the rural Frenchmen, as exemplified by her neighbors who shielded her—a Jewish lesbian—from the German occupiers and nobly carried on as the world around them imploded.
“We spend our Friday afternoons with friends reading Shakespeare, we have read Julius Caesar, and Macbeth and now Richard the Third and what is so terrifying is that it is all just like what is happening now.”
--Gertrude Stein