Cocteau - A Biography

London: Macmillan, 1970. Gold title on brown cloth boards which has just a touch of wear to spine head. Internally there are some minor marks to lower closed edge else very clean, tight and unmarked. A Very Good+ copy. Dustjacket has a repaired closed tear and wear to edges and is not price clipped. xiv + 583 pages. 45 illustrations. Jean Cocteau, who died in 1963 at the age of 74 after 58 years of kaleidoscopic activity in the arts, was a fascinating and paradoxical figure. With the astounding variety of his work - as poet, novelist, playwright, artist and film-maker (merely to begin at the top of the list) - and the contradictions of his private life, the charm and the nastiness, the generosity and the egotism, the poise and anguish of an opium addicted homosexual who was equally welcome in the aristocratic drawing rooms of Paris and the raffish waterfront bars of Toulon, and who crowned a life among the avant garde by entering the ultra conservative precincts of the Académie Française. He provides a rich and challenging subject for biography. Francis Steegmuller is admirably qualified for this task having written the definitive biography of Maupassant and many other biographies. PLEASE NOTE: A HEAVY VOLUME OF 1.37 KILO UNPACKED WEIGHT WHICH MAY REQUIRE ADDITIONAL SHIPPING COST 13. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.