"NOT I, BUT THE WIND...

Santa Fe: The Rydal Press, 1934. First Edition, one of 1000 copies numbered by hand. This copy a rare presentation copy inscribed to the recipient in the author's hand. Illustrated with black & white photographs throughout. Large octavo, publisher's original beige boards, backed in beige polished buckram, the spine with phoenix lettering label printed in red. 311 pp. An essentially fine copy, with some mellowing to the spine panel and some light evidence of shelving. FIRST EDITION AUTOBIOGRAPHY, INSCRIBED AND PRESENTED BY THE AUTHOR. Frieda Lawrence was born into the German nobility at Metz. She married D.H. Lawrence in 1914 and lived with him in England during the First World War. They left postwar England at the earliest opportunity, traveled widely, eventually settled at the Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico, and in Lawrence's last years at the Villa Mirenda, near Scandicci in Tuscany.
Georgia O'Keeffe, who knew her in Taos, said in 1974: "Frieda was very special. I can remember very clearly the first time I ever saw her, standing in a doorway, with her hair all frizzed out, wearing a cheap red calico dress that looked as though she'd just wiped out the frying pan with it. She was not thin, and not young, but there was something radiant and wonderful about her."
The recipient, "Dale" Warren was and American Editor and Publisher. After interrupting his studies to serve in World War I, in 1919 Warren graduated from Princeton University, where F. Scott Fitzgerald was a classmate. Warren worked as a sales representative for the American Book Co. and Princeton University Press before becoming a publicity agent and then director of advertising for Houghton Mifflin. There he edited A Modern Galaxy: Short Stories (1930), which featured Willa Cather’s “Double Birthday” (1929). Warren also edited What is a Book: Thoughts About Writing (1935) and wrote The Care and Feeding of a Place in the Country (1941).
Inscribed and association copies of Frieda Lawrence's autobiography are very scarce in commerce.