Lot 2: BOCHORAKOVA-DITTRICHOVA, Helena (1894-1980). Childhood: A Cycle of Woodcuts . London: A. Zwemmer [printed by F. Obzina, Vyskov, Czechoslovakia], 1931. Small 4° (152 x 115mm). Introduction by Arne Novák, woodcut title and 95 full-page woodcuts

BOCHORAKOVA-DITTRICHOVA, Helena (1894-1980). Childhood: A Cycle of Woodcuts. London: A. Zwemmer [printed by F. Obzina, Vyskov, Czechoslovakia], 1931. Small 4° (152 x 115mm). Introduction by Arne Novák, woodcut title and 95 full-page woodcuts (light browning, corner missing from front free endpaper). Publisher's paper boards, dust-jacket with woodcut design on upper cover (internal restoration to spine and endpaper hinges, light wear to one corner, small section missing from upper jacket cover, jacket creases strengthened with archival tape). FIRST AND ONLY EDITION, limited to 300 unnumbered copies. There was also an edition of 10 numbered copies on handmade paper signed by the artist. No copy on ABPC; 5 copies in public collections.

Bochorakova-Dittrichova's "pictorial record of a year in a [Moravian] country town with all its diversions" (Novák) was the first woodcut novel by a woman and is one of the most important 'wordless books' in the tradition of Frans Masereel: "The woodcut, used thus, has again become what it was for Holbein in the Renaissance and for Doré in the period of Romanticism ... a medium for interpreting reality in all its phases." (Novák)

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