THE HORSE’S TALE
KAVAN, Anna; Karl Theodor 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.
Uncommon first edition of this novel authored jointly by Kavan and her psychiatrist and friend Karl Theodor Bluth, written from the perspective of an ex-circus horse trying to find a place in postwar society and artistic circles, a criticism of prevailing trends in 1940s psychiatric treatment.
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 twenty 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 was published in only one small edition and is one of the scarcest Gaberbocchus Press books.
OCLC finds only one copy in the UK, at the British Library.
