Tunc

First edition.
Small holes to top edge, copy lacking dust jacket.
Precious autograph inscription dated and signed by Lawrence Durrell to his friend Janine Brun: "For Janine Brun / from Lawrence Durrell /Sommières / 1968".
Among the olive trees and under the Mediterranean sun, Lawrence Durrell met in the mid-1960s the young and vivacious "Jany" (Janine Brun), a woman from Montpellier in her thirties of devastating beauty, who worked at the Department of Antiquities at the Sorbonne in Paris. She was nicknamed "Buttons" in memory of their first meeting, when the young woman wore a dress covered with buttons. Henry Miller also fell under the spell of "Buttons," praising her beauty and eternal youth in exceptional unpublished letters. The three companions spent memorable Parisian evenings of which we retain precious autograph traces through their epistolary exchanges. Recommended by Durrell, she made numerous trips notably to England from where she received vast correspondence from the writer as well as original works of art signed with his artist pseudonym, Oscar Epfs.