First edition.
Inscribed by Gisele Freund on the front endpaper to Natalia Danesi Murray, the companion of Janet Flanner: ""Pour Natalia / avec des pensees affectueuses de / Gisele / 24 decembre 1991".
Gisele Freund [1908 or 1912-2000] was a German-born French photographer, known for her documentary photographs and portraits of writers and artists. A socialist activist and a Jew, she fled Hitler's Germany in 1933 and escaped to Paris with her negatives strapped to her body to hide them from the border guards. In Paris, she knew and photographed many of the leading artists of her time, including James Joyce, Colette, Andre Malraux, Andre Gide, Cocteau and Virginia Woolf, as well as Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company.
Natalia Danesi Murray [1901-1994] was born in Italy. She emigrated to the United States in 1924 and married music critic William B. Murray, whom she divorced in the mid- 1930s. She worked in journalism and publishing and was appointed vice president of Rizzoli Editore in 1966. She became the lover of Janet Flanner, arranging for the publication of her uncollected writings after her death and editing Flanner's "Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend", published by Random House in 1985. Fine .
Keywords: PHOTOGRAPHY; PHOTOGRAPHER; GERMAN-BORN; FRENCH; LESBIAN; GISELE FREUND, PORTRAIT; INTERVIEW; ENTRETIENS AVEC RAUDA JANIS; INSCRIBED; SIGNED; SIGNATURE; AUTOGRAPH; NATALIA DANESI MURRAY; JANET FLANNER'S LOVER; ILLUSTRATIONS.