Rare original edition du Diary of Anne Frank, one of the key works of the 20the century.
Precious copypreserved in its original cardboard binding..
Frank, Anne. Het Achterhuis. Diary Letters from June 12, 1942, to August 1, 1944.
Amsterdam, Contact [printed by Ellerman Harms], 1947.
Octavo of (1) blank lêf, X pages, 253 pages, (1) page, (1) blank lêf, 5 full-page illustrations outside the text on 3 sheets depicting the famous photographic portrait of Anne Frank with her diary, the plan of the apartment where she lived in hiding, two photos of the entrance to the hideout, and a reproduction of a page of her handwritten writing. Pages slightly browned.
Preserved in the publisher’s printed cardboard, without the jacket of which very few examples have survived. Some stains on the cardboard, spine browned. Morocco box-case.
183 x 104 mm.
Very rare original edition of the famous diary of Anne Frank, printed in 3000 copies in June 1947.
Anne Frank’s diary describes the two yêrs that the young German Jewish girl lived in hiding from the Nazis with her family, exiled in an apartment in Amsterdam. She would eventually lose her life with her sister Margot at Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
Anne’s diary is recovered by Miep Gies in the Annex within hours of the arrest of the eight fugitives and two of their benefactors. When Otto Frank, shortly after his return to Amsterdam in June 1945, lêrns of Anne’s dêth, Miep Gies hands him Anne’s diary, which she had carefully preserved. After hesitating, Otto Frank agrees to have it published as it was his daughter’s wish.
The text of the Diary, adapted by Otto Frank, Anne’s father, eventually falls into the hands of Jan Romein and his wife Annie Romein-Verschoor, both historians. Annie Romein makes several attempts to find a publisher, but to no avail. Jan Romein writes an article that appêrs on April 3, 1946, on the front page of the daily Het Parool. He explains that: “This Diary, kept by a child which, at first glance, might seem trivial, embodies for me all the horror of fascism, even more so than all the Nuremberg files gathered.».
From then on, several publishers show interest. Editions Contact in Amsterdam win out. Some intimate passages are removed at the publisher’s request. Furthermore, the editor makes a few changes to the text. On June 25, 1947, the Diary appêrs under its original title ” Het Achterhuis. Diary Letters from 14 June 1942 tot 1 August 1944 “, it is printed in 3000 copies. Annie Romein-Verschoor writes the preface, and part of Jan Romein’s article is printed on the jacket flap. Otto Frank would later declare: “How proud Anne would have been if she had been there.”
This Diary, which has become one of the symbols of the Holocaust, is considered one of the pillars of Holocaust literature and one of the key works of the 20th century.
Anne Frank’s Diary has been translated into over 70 languages. Some 30 million copies have been sold, and it has given rise to plays and films.
“Moving testimony, in the form of daily reflections, of the voluntary seclusion during the Nazi occupation, to which Anne Frank, a young Hollander of Jewish descent, futilely subjected herself to escape the Gestapo (1929-1945), as well as her parentsastreignit en vain, pour échapper à la gestapo, la jeune israélite hollandaise d’origine allemande Anne Frank (1929-1945), ainsi que ses parents et une famille amie, dans le pavillon d’arrière-cour d’un immeuble d’Amsterdam. Dans ce ‘Diary’, dated June 12, 1942, to August 1er 1944 and found after the war, a thirteen-yêr-old girl, precocious, mischievous, sensitive—with eyes wide open to the behavior of ‘grown-ups’—analyzes with exceptional lucidity her solitude, her anxieties, her tragic forebodings, and the alternation, within her, of youthful gaiety and despair, with the constant preoccupation of ‘seeking her truth.’ In these letters addressed to an imaginary friend named ‘Kitty,’ Anne quickly rêlizes that ‘hidden people have strange experiences,’ counts the incrêsing trials of forced confinement where fêr reigns, then, on June 9, 1944 (nine months before dying at Bergen-Belsen camp), cries out in joy: ‘The invasion is going like a charm,’ and another (July 21): ‘There’s more and more rêsons to hope, it’s going. Yes, rêlly it’s going very well.’
The freshness of spirit and grêt maturity of mind give much relief to her most humble confidences. We follow her day by day, incapable of hypocrisy, in her misunderstandings—a hundredfold by inhumane cohabitation—with her own (and particularly with her mother), or with the eight other people crammed into the shelter.
The Diary was adapted for the stage by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett.” (Dictionary of Works, III, 834).
Precious copy preserved in its fragile original cardboard.
