Clea

New edition.
Small corner creases to covers, one more noticeable at head of first cover.
Manuscript signature of Lawrence Durrell on the half-title page.
Provenance: from the library of Jani Brun.
Among the olive trees and under the Mediterranean sun, Lawrence Durrell met in the mid-1960s the young and vivacious "Jany" (Janine Brun), a thirty-something woman from Montpellier of devastating beauty, who worked in 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 Henry Miller also fell under the charm of "Buttons," praising her beauty and eternal youth in exceptional unpublished letters. The three companions spent memorable Parisian evenings of which we preserve precious autograph traces through their epistolary exchanges. Recommended by Durrell, she made numerous trips particularly to England from where she received extensive correspondence from the writer as well as original works of art signed with his artist pseudonym, Oscar Epfs.