Hardcover volume 211 x 141 mm, bound in quarter black buckram over green buckram boards, gilt lettering to spine, pictorial dust jacket with white lettering, ink inscriptions and paper clipping pasted to free endpaper, laid-in two newspaper clippings – January 26, 1970 and late 1950s; pp.: [1-10] [2] 3-342, plus 3 photo plates, extraneous to collation. 1st edition, 2nd printing, October 1953.
Title-page: CARESSE CROSBY | THE | PASSIONATE | YEARS | {publisher’s device} | THE DIAL PRESS […] 1953 • NEW YORK ||
Imprint: Copyright, 1953, by Caresse Crosby | Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 52-10093 | FIRST PRINTING, MARCH 1953 | SECOND PRINTING, OCTOBER 1953 | DESIGNED BY WILLIAM R. MEINHARDT | PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY | THE HADDON CRAFTSMEN, SCRANTON, PA.
Contributors:
Caresse Crosby [Mary Phelps Jacob] (American, 1892 – 1970) – author.
Haddon Craftsmen (Scranton, PA) – printer.
The Dial Press – publisher (1923-85)
honesterotica.com: Here is what Caresse wrote about May and Frans during their time together in interwar Paris, from the copy of her autobiography which she inscribed to them with the telling inscription ‘our most passionate years with you!’: ‘Frans de Geetere came to France dragging his barge behind him, and having manoeuvered the dikes of Holland and the frontiers of Belgium and the northern waterways of France, he strode into Paris one summer evening towing his dwelling with May den Engelsen, his timid blonde bride atop of it – he on the footpath, a stout rope about his lean and muscular middle. At twenty-one with the sunburned torso, a crest of wild black curls, and snapping black eyes, Frans was a storybook character, and May, his Netherlands wife, was as frail and honey-golden as some princesse lointaine. There were two tortoiseshell kittens aboard and a hold stuffed with paintings of flowers and nudes in profusion, for Frans had come to Paris for Art’s sweet sake, not to study because he was already confident and bold, but to compete in the marketplace with the greatest artists of the day.’
