Felix Salten / Kurt Wiese / BAMBI / 1928 / and similar items

BAMBI Felix Salten A Life in the Woods. [Translated from the German by Whittaker Chambers.] Foreword by John Galsworthy. Illustrated by Kurt Wiese New York: Simon and Schuster, 1928. 293 pages plus one page of the publisher?s ads. Octavo. Frontispiece and 25 plates by Kurt Wiese, vignette title page printed in black and green. Original green vertical-ribbed cloth, spine lettered gilt and with thick gilt rule at head and tail, front cover with deer motif in gilt in central panel, pictorial endpapers. In original unclipped ($2.50) unrestored dust jacket. Spine fade in the green section of the jacket spine stating ?Second Printing?- other than this dust jacket is identical to first issue jacket. A wonderful example of an unsophisticated dust jacket. ?????? An exceptional copy, the best we have encountered in decades of selling rare books. ?????? BAMBI was preceded by a limited edition of 1000 copies; "First printing in America, July 1928" stated on the verso of the title page. First printing of the first trade edition in English in the original unrestored dust jacket. Fine copy in near fine to fine dust jacket. ?????? Note: First edition in English, first printing (July 1928); originally published in German (Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, 1923). In 1936 Nazi Germany the government banned the original edition as "political allegory on the treatment of Jews in Europe." Many copies of the novel were burned, making original first editions rare and difficult to find. BAMBI dark theories often center on the hunter's identity (sometimes linked to Gaston), the original book's harsher realism and political allegory (Nazi Germany), and the idea that Walt Disney projected his own trauma over his mother's death into the story, making characters like Bambi symbolic of his grief. Other critics suggest "the text is really best understood not when dehistoricized (as presented by Disney), but rather when read within the specific context of Vienna of the 1920s, as a text that has to do with anti-Semitism and the struggle for a Jewish identity." Salten, born Siegmund Saltzmann, was a Viennese theatre critic, novelist, and screenwriter; author of two other books adapted into Disney films. After his works were banned by Hitler in 1936, he and his family emigrated to Switzerland, where he remained until his death in 1945. A lovely copy of this "little masterpiece" (Galsworthy).