Memoirs of a Booklegger - Jack Kahane 1939 - Michael Joseph Ltd., London - First Edition In the original scarce and unclipped dust jacket, not a common book as most of the edition were destroyed when a German bomb hit the publisher's warehouse.

Jack Kahane founded the Obelisk Press based in Paris, in France in 1929, he took advantage of the fact that books published in France in English were not subject to the kind of censorship practised in Britain at the time.

He published among others Henry Millers ‘
Tropic of Capricorn’, which had explicit sexual passages and and could therefore not be published in the U.S. Other author’s included James Joyce, Anaïs Nin, and Lawrence Durrell.

Kahane passed away just before the outbreak of World War II, having just finished this book of his memoirs. His son took over the press which later became the Olympia Press continuing in a similar tradition, being the first to publish works such as Nabokov’s ‘
Lolita’ and Burrough’s ‘Naked Lunch’ .
  Octavo (book size 22.4x14.8cm) pp. 287 [1]. Publisher’s light blue coated boards, spine lettered and blocked in silver, yellow endpapers. Dust jacket priced 12’6 net to lower corner of front flap.   Condition: Near fine, light foxing to page edges, and some degradation to rear endpapers which seems strangely common with this book, in very good dust jacket, wear to corners, two 1cm chips to corners of rear panel, rubbing along edges, soiled, lightly faded spine.   Ref: 111471   Price: HK$ 4,000