Books

345/1000 signed Thomas Mann on colophon. Octavo. Original half vellum with gilt decor and lettering on spines over elegant decorative paper-covered boards with Mann's monogram in gilt on covers. Gilt top edges. Frontispiece lithograph of portrait drawing by Olaf Gulbransson. Introduction by Hans Reisiger. Cover design by E. R. Wei� . The German author, essayist and playwright Thomas Mann (1875� "1955) worked and wrote in Germany until the Nazis rose to power in 1933. Mann fled to Switzerland and moved to the United States in 1939 where he became one of the exponents of the so-called Exile Literature. The novel Magic Mountain was first published in 1924. It is considered by many as the pinnacle of his work and is one of the most influential works of German literature in the 20th century. Two postcards addressed to the family Schwendy, possibly relatives of the German painter Albert Schwendy, laid in, postmarked and sent from Thailand. Text in German, Gothic script. Boards lightly scuffed, else in very good condition. Interior clean throughout. There is a small closed tear and creasing to the very corner of p.558 in the sceond volume. Book block tight. Binding in very good, inteirors in very good+ to near fine condition overall.

A landmark of modern literature, The Magic Mountain unfolds in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe on the eve of World War I.