Jun 02, 2022 - Sale 2607

Sale 2607 - Lot 83

Price Realized: $ 219
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 500
Jesenská, Milena (1896-1944)
Cesta k Jednoduchosti.

Prague: Topic, 1926.

First edition of the author's first book, one of 300 copies, unnumbered, bound in full red leather, with title and author stamped in gilt on front board, 7 1/8 x 4 1/2 in.

Jesenská was a correspondent of Franz Kafka, and translated several of his works from German into Czech. She worked in letters throughout her life, editing, translating, and writing short and long works. Vocal regarding the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia while writing for and editing the magazine Prítomnost (The Presence), she stayed in Prague at her own peril in 1939. There she was detained by the Gestapo, first at Pankrác and later in Dresden. She died as an inmate at the Ravensbrück concentration camp on May 17, 1944.

This particular work, whose title translates to The Journey to Simplicity, contains straightforward advice about marriage, love, freedom, and other topics.