IMPORTANT ORIGINAL 45-PAGE TYPED MANUSCRIPT FOR THE FIRST THREE CHAPTERS OF ISAK DINESEN’S UNFINISHED NOVEL, ALBONDOCANI, WITH ANNOTATIONS AND CORRECTIONS

DINESEN, Isak. From the Unfinished Novel Albondocani. Three Chapters (The Cloak. Night Walk. Of Hidden Thoughts and of Heaven). Original typed manuscript. No place, circa 1955. Total of 45 leaves. With original manila envelope, measuring 8-1/2 by 11 inches, title hand-printed and underlined on address panel, containing one original blank leaf of watermarked bond paper and one blank cardboard leaf. Housed in custom portfolio and clamshell box. $5000.

Extraordinary original typewritten and corrected manuscripts of three interrelated tales intended as the first chapters of Dinesen’s unfinished novel Albondocani and ultimately published in her 1957 collection of previously unpublished works, Last Tales, all three manuscripts from the library of her longtime editor at Random House, Saxe Commins, who edited Last Tales. Containing both handwritten and typed changes in the 45-page manuscript, with a manila envelope labeled in blue ink, underlined in red, “Typescript, The Cloak, From the Novel Albondocani.”

"One of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century, a woman who had 'style' as well as a remarkably grave and luminous prose style," Isak Dinesen, born Karen Blixen, followed her memoir Out of Africa (1937), "the greatest pastoral romance of modern times," with a series of critically praised fictional works. To many, Blixen is best compared to Hemingway for works in which "both authors urge upon us a certain style of courage… [and] admiration of the warrior's code" (John Updike). In the years before her death in 1962, Blixen began work on a novel Albondocani and by 1956 had completed three chapters. This rare typewritten manuscript of those chapters—"The Cloak," "Night Walk" and "Of Hidden Thoughts and of Heaven"— is from the library of Blixen's longtime close friend and editor, Saxe Commins, who, as senior editor at Random House, had also worked extensively with William Faulkner, Theodore Dreiser, Gertrude Stein, Eugene O'Neill and others. Increasingly frail toward the end of her life, Blixen had hopes of completing Albondocani but in September 1956 wrote Commins, who was then in the midst of editing her Last Tales, a collection of unpublished works-in-progress. "Now we come to Last Tales," she wrote. "I have not really abandoned Albondocani as an entity, but do on the contrary hope to get the novel finished before my death… but last year put aside the idea of it and decided to have the chapters already written included in Last Tales… You write me that three chapters of Albondocani—'The Cloak,' 'Night Walk' and "Of Secret Thoughts and of Heaven' are still missing. But you have in fact already received these, [but] if you have not got them, I will send them to you." When published in Last Tales (1957), Commins recalled these works as "simply marvelous. They are pervaded with a mood, part real and part mystical and always compelling, of a uniquely original mind and a sure, deft hand. They are, for the most part, fairy tales and certainly parables told with a somber earnestness and always with a haunting atmosphere of the tragic" (What Is An Editor—Saxe Commins at Work, 185-90).

These unique, original typewritten manuscripts for Blixen's three stories contain subtle but important editorial changes, some significantly altering the style, meaning or impact of a phrase or sentence. Throughout corrections have been either typed or written in a neat hand that consistently uses blue ink. The manuscript for "The Cloak," for example, contains nine corrections, on pp. 1, 13, 16, 18 and 19, in which the original typed words have been inked out and new words or phrases written above or below the typed line. Other corrections consist of additions only, all inked in the same, precise hand: a letter that completes the word "as" on p. 2; a phrase at the end of a line on p. 16, and on p. 18, a copyediting sign that inserts a phrase between two typed words. The impact of these changes can be felt in one representative passage that describes the torment of the young artist Angelo who is devoted to his teacher, a respected sculptor, yet in love with the old man's young wife Lucrezia. In a vivid dream, "He had his knife in his hand, he leapt forward, and plunged it first in the man's heart, then in hers, as they lay clasped in [two words inked out] arms. But the sight of their blood, mingled, soaking into the sheet, [four words inked out]." The revised passage, however, with its suggested changes handwritten above and below the typed lines in blue ink (shown here as italicized), reads, "He had his knife in his hand, he leapt forward, and plunged it first in the man's heart, then in hers, as they lay clasped in one another's arms. But the sight of their blood, mingled, soaking into the sheet, like a red-hot iron burnt out his eyes." In the manuscript for "Night Walk," there are three typewritten corrections. These consist of typewritten insertions above lines on pp. 4 & 6, and a typed word crossed out with typed "x's" on p. 8. Similarly there are only typewritten corrections in the manuscript for "Of Hidden Thoughts and of Heaven" (titled "Of Secret Thoughts and of Heaven" in Blixen's letter to Commins); these consist of corrections to p. 6—a typed spelling correction in line 2 and one manuscript correction, a typed word crossed out with typed "x's." The manuscript pages are typed on recto only, double-spaced, and each possesses a title page with "I," "II" and "III" written in blue-ink above typewritten titles on the respective title pages.

Lightest edge-wear, tape repair and traces of tape residue to title page of "The Cloak" and the final leaf to "Of Hidden Thoughts and of Heaven." A remarkable manuscript with an exceptional provenance, in about-fine condition.