The Garden Party and Other Stories.: With coloured lithographs by Marie Laurencin.

London: The Verona Press,, 1939. Featuring Laurencin's "queer femme illustrations with a Gallic twist" (Pilcher) First illustrated edition, limited edition, number 708 of 1,200 copies designed and printed by the elite printer Hans Mardersteig of the Officina Bodoni, this a notably bright example. The edition is beautifully illustrated with "queer femme illustrations with a Gallic twist" by the important Parisian Cubist artist Marie Laurencin (1883-1956) (Pilcher). Though printed in 1939, the outbreak of the Second World War delayed publication until 1947. The stories contained herein are a selection of Katherine Mansfield's "best" works from across her career; as such, the content slightly differs from the celebrated 1922 edition of the same name. "One of the most highly regarded short story writers of the 20th century" (British Library), Mansfield (1888-1923) left her native New Zealand for good in 1908 and lived a peripatetic, bohemian life in the orbit of the Bloomsbury Group in London. Mansfield's experiences of familial estrangement and persistent ill-health served to influence her work, which often deals in themes of anxiety, sexuality, and existentialism. Following her premature death from tuberculosis, she was remembered by Virginia Woolf for having "the only writing I have ever been jealous of... Probably we had something in common which I shall never find in anyone else" (p. 227), and by her readers "for her divination of the hatred and cruelties beneath the sweet surfaces of family life; and for her sympathy with the vulnerable, the displaced, and the lonely" (ODNB). Her work, including her journal, retains cult status, particularly among young women. Octavo. Original green and white patterned cloth, titles to spine in gilt on red ground, top edge yellow, other edges untrimmed. With dust jacket and the publisher's card slipcase. Publisher's note tipped in following the title page. Title page in orange and black. With 16 colour lithographs in the text. Christmas gift inscription to front pastedown. Very light foxing to boards, book block edges, and endpapers; a near-fine copy in the jacket with browned spine and a little creasing to edges. Slight splits to head and foot of slipcase. Kirkpatrick D6. British Library, "Katherine Mansfield", accessible online; Alex Pilcher, A Queer Little History of Art, 2017; Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. 2, 1978.