NY: The John Day Company, 1953. First edition (no additional printings noted). vii, 212pp; 16 b&w plates; index. Brown cloth; dust jacket. Softened spine ends, mild smudging to fore-edge, strip of offsetting to ffep; very good in a price-clipped jacket with moderate soiling, toning, and wear. With errata slip tipped in at rear noting several objections to the text raised by the widow of Vaslav Nijinsky.
American first edition of this uncommon memoir by Russian-born pianist and arts patron Misia Serts (1872-1950), noted for her opulent Belle Époque Parisian art salon where she counted among her regular guests Debussy, Satie, Mallarmé, Toulouse-Lautrec, et al; Sert also furnished the basis for the entwined characters of Madame Verdurin and Princesse Yourbeletieff in Proust's La recherche du temps perdu. Jacket design by Jeanyee Wong, incorporating a drawing of Sert by Jean Cocteau, whose literary portrait of Sert appears here both as introductory excerpt and later in full.
