Hitler

MY BATTLE Mein Kampf in scarce dustjacket

1933 · ref. 45395 — Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Very Good- in Very Good- dust jacket. Second Edition. Hardcover. 8vo; viii 297 pages; Former owner's name on ffep "Susan Mary Jay Alsop / September 30 1938 / Bar Harbor" otherwise clean and secure in original peach/tan cloth binding with titles in red at spine and front board; some toning to endpapers and cloth. Dustjacket has a 1.25 inch closed tear at bottom of front panel and some general creasing and edgewear see images. Second American edition of My Battle Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler in the publisher’s scarce and controversial dust jacket. This autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler describes the process by which Hitler became anti-Semitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany. Hitler began writing Mein Kampf while imprisoned following his failed Putsch in Munich in November 1923. Eventually Hitler realized it would have to be a two-volume work; the first volume was published in 1925 and the second in 1926. After slow initial sales the book became a bestseller in Germany following Hitler's rise to power in 1933. E. T. S. Dugdale began writing an English abridgment of the two volume German edition of Mein Kampf in 1931 but finding a publisher proved difficult. Houghton Mifflin secured the rights to the Dugdale abridgment on July 29 1933. The first print run of only 7603 copies priced at $3.00 met with moderate commercial success but elicited condemnation from Jewish American groups across the United States. Houghton Mifflin decided to risk a second edition only 3497 copies with a retail price of $2.50 and a new dust jacket design which resulted in a diplomatic protest from the German government demanding that it be replaced with an approved design from the German publisher Eher Verlag but Houghton Mifflin refused. The dustjacket for the second edition had panels of black red and yellow and a quotation from Dorothy Thompson. The Nazi government objected to the black-red-yellow color scheme which was emblematic of the liberal German revolutions of 1848–49 and the Weimar Republic while the Nazis had returned to the black white red emblems of the German Empire. Thompson's quotation was also objected to as she had been expelled from the Reich in 1934 after writing unflattering accounts of Hitler. James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes Hitler's Mein Kampf in Britain and America: A Publishing History 1930–39; Cambridge University Press 1980 PROVENANCE: From the collection of Susan Mary Patten Alsop a popular historian and a pillar of Washington society was the daughter of a diplomat a descendant of founding father John Jay and served with her first husband Bill Patten at the American Embassy in Paris in the 1950s. When her husband died in 1960 she married Joseph Alsop the journalist the following year. In the 1970s she embarked on her own literary career producing "To Marietta From Paris: 1945-1960" 1974 followed by "Lady Sackville: A Biography" 1978 "Yankees at the Court: The First Americans in Paris" 1982 and "The Congress Dances: Vienna 1814-1815" 1984. Her Georgetown homes both with and without Alsop hosted dignitaries publishers and a variety of interesting people during the 1960s and 1970s including such luminaries as John F. Kennedy Phil Graham Katharine Graham and Isaiah Berlin earning her the nickname "the grand dame of Washington society" to which she rather objected. . 1933. Houghton Mifflin hardcover