FRANK, Anne.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Diary of a Young Girl. First edition in English, finely bound, of "the best-known personal document associated with the Holocaust and one of the most widely read books of modern times" (Graver, p. 222).The British-born translator Barbara Mooyaart-Doubleday was living in Amsterdam when the original Dutch-language edition appeared in 1947. Having impressed Frank's father Otto with a sample chapter, she was engaged to make the complete translation by the London publishers Vallentine Mitchell, who specialized in books of Jewish interest. The London edition, published in April, was received quietly. It was not until the appearance of the US edition the following June that the book entered the bestseller lists and announced itself as one of the emblematic books of the 20th century. "Anne's diary is both a fine piece of literature and the testament of a vivacious, lively, and insightful adolescent during very troubled times... [It] put a human face to the unfathomable statistics of the millions of individuals who suffered and died" (Cargas, pp. 52-3).

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