Babette's Feast

by Dinesen, Isak; Olney, Richard (Afterword); Wikstrom, Karin (Illustrations)

$1,100 · Offered by Biblio

Signed

[Covelo, California]: [The Yolla Bolly Press], 1997. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Fine. Wikstrom, Karin. One of 250 copies, folio size, 57 pp., signed by Richard Olney and Karin Wikstrom, with prepublication announcement and prospectus. Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (1885-1962), known by her pen name Isak Dinesen, wrote in both Danish and English, and is best known for her memoir "Out of Africa", an account of her life in Kenya on a coffee farm. Her story "Babette's Feast", written in the summer of 1949, did not appear in print until 1958, as part of a collection; it is about Babette, a French Communard who escapes France and settles in a small Norwegian fishing village, employed by two spinster sisters as their housekeeper. Unbeknownst to the sisters, Babette is a renowned Parisian chef, and she prepares a meal for the sisters and their guests which is "spiritually transforming. Babette's artistry is such that old suspicions melt away. . .and everyone at the table departs in an altered state. Dinesen and her heroine have given us a hugely entertaining fable in which bodily and spiritual appetites are satisfied, rendering irrelevent. . .the dichotomy between aesthetics and morality" (per the prospectus). Included in this publication by The Yolla Bolly Press are woodcuts by Swedish artist Karin Wikstrom (b. 1959), who has contributed illustrations for several other Press editions, including "The Inland Whale" by Theodora Kroeber and "Zapata" by John Steinbeck. Here, her p

• Publisher: [The Yolla Bolly Press]
• Year: 1997
• Edition: Limited Edition
• Binding: hardcover

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