Sale 2530 - Fine Books & Manuscripts, February 20, 2020

237 c   FRANK,ANNE. Het Achterhuis: Dagboekbrieven van 12 Juni 1942-1 Augustus 1944 [“The House Behind: Diary Entries.”] Illustrated with halftone frontispiece author portrait, 2 photographic reproductions of the interior of the house, 1 floor plan, and 2 facsimiles from the diary. Original Dutch text. 8vo, publisher’s white and russet paper boards, spine with usual toning, board edges with occasional paper loss; gutter at portrait/title, p. 6/floor plan, and pp. 252-253 split but holding,Amsterdam bookseller’s ticket on front pastedown, ownership signature to title. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Contact, (1947) [2,000/3,000] the true first edition of anne frank ’ s diary . After its initial release, the book was translated and published in more than 60 languages. It remains one of the most widely read books in the world. “Anne Frank’s diary is too tenderly intimate a book to be frozen with the label ‘classic,’ and yet no lesser designation serves.There is anguish in the thought of how much creative power, how much sheer beauty of living, was cut off through genocide. But through her diary Anne goes on living” (Books of the Century, 180, 183).