Description

Hardcover, black cloth in original non price-clipped dust-jacket. Signed on front free end-paper by author with brief inscription, dated Dec. 1976. 224pp., Preface by Oliver Jensen. Profusely illustrated with black and white photographs. First edition. Book condition: clean, square, unmarked copy (save for author’s inscription), with no previous owner’s name or book-plate. Dust-jacket shows some wear from age, notably to spine ends and tips, with light foxing to blank verso on rear cover and on very upper extremity of rear flap. “Alice Austen (1866 – 1952) was one of America’s earliest and most prolific female photographers, and over the course of her life she captured about 8,000 images. Though she is best known for her documentary work, Austen was an artist with a strong aesthetic sensibility. Furthermore, she was a landscape designer, a master tennis player, and the first woman on Staten Island to own a car. She never married, and instead spent fifty years with Gertrude Tate. A rebel who broke away from the ties of her Victorian environment, Alice Austen created her own independent life.” A nice copy of a scarce book, signed by author. A near fine copy in a good or better dust-jacket.