KAVAN, Anna & K.T. BLUTH.
The Horse’s Tale.
London, Gaberbocchus Press, [1949].
8vo, pp. 112; uniformly browned throughout; in grey publisher’s cloth, spine lettered red; boards discoloured in parts with some soiling; a good copy.
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The Horse’s Tale.
First edition of the novel written jointly by Kavan and her psychiatrist and friend Karl Theodor Bluth. Anna Kavan (1901-1968), born Helen Emily Woods, began her writing career in 1929, publishing a series of novels under her married name of Helen Ferguson. After the breakdown of her second marriage in 1938, and a subsequent bout of severe depression, she adopted the pen name (and legal name) Anna Kavan and began writing the introspective and unsettling novels and stories for which she is best known. Karl Theodor Bluth (1892-1964) was Kavan’s doctor for over 20 years and supplied her (legally) with the heroin on which she relied so heavily to maintain her increasingly fragile mental state. Kavan’s grief at his death in 1964 is the basis for her short story ‘The Mercedes’ which appeared in the posthumously-published Julia and the Bazooka (1970). The Horse’s Tale is told in the voice of an ex-circus horse trying to find a place in post-war society and artistic circles and serves as a criticism of the prevailing trends in psychiatric treatment in the 1940s. It was published in only one small edition and is one of the scarcest Gaberbocchus Press books, not included in most lists of Gaberbocchus publications.
Uncommon; Worldcat finds only 2 copies in the UK (BL, V&A) and 8 in the US.
