BAMBI

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1928. Near fine in very good plus jacket.. First printing of the first trade edition in English, in the scarce original dust jacket (expertly restored). Like many great children's books, Bambi was originally published to an admiring audience of adults, who in time found themselves too sensitive for the terror and brutality of Life in the Woods. To generations scarred in childhood by the softened Disney adaptation, it may seem scarcely credible that Salten's original novel could be still more great and terrible in its presentation of a fawn's first bewildered encounters with pain, death, and sex - but it is. Though BAMBI is easily read as an environmentalist or anti-hunting fable, more recent critics suggest "the text is really best understood not when dehistoricized (as presented by Disney), but rather when read within the specific context of Vienna of the 1920s, as a text that has to do with anti-Semitism and the struggle for a Jewish identity."

Salten, born Siegmund Saltzmann, was a Viennese theatre critic, novelist, and screenwriter; author of two other books adapted into Disney films (PERRI and THE HOUND OF FLORENCE (The Shaggy Dog)); assumed author of the notorious erotic novel JOSEPHINE MUTZENBACHER; and nemesis of Karl Kraus. After his works were banned by Hitler in 1936, he and his family emigrated to Switzerland, where he remained until his death.

A lovely copy of this "little masterpiece" (Galsworthy). 8'' x 5.5''. Original gilt-stamped green cloth with gilt-titled spine. In original unclipped ($2.50) dust jacket. Top edge stained yellow, pictorial endpapers. Preceded by a limited edition of 1000 copies; "First printing in America, July 1928" to title page verso. Black and white illustrations throughout by Kurt Wiese. Translated from the German by Whittaker Chambers, with a foreword by John Galsworthy. [2], 293, [1] pages. Minor bumping, slight spine lean; faint evidence of sticker removal rear paste-down. Jacket toned, with expert restoration to spine and extremities.