BUTTS, Mary; COCTEAU, Jean (illus.).

£2,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Imaginary Letters. First edition, limited issue, number 55 of 250 numbered copies on large paper; this a presentation copy and is inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "Peter Teigen, all good wishes from Mary Butts... part of a part of my best part of Paris... September 1928". Butts met the recipient through one of her closest friends, Harcourt Wesson Bull, who recalled their escapades in Paris in 1928 "at a time when sheer pleasure-seeking was neither shaming nor dull". Butts took a liking to his friend Teigen, whom she nicknamed "Mr. Peter Tiger".Imaginary Letters is a fictional tale of gay heartbreak in 1920s Paris, comprised of eight letters written to the mother of a young Russian by one of his exasperated (and possibly infatuated) friends. It was the first book that Cocteau illustrated, aside from his own publications.

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