The Tale of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
New York, 1932
 
First American edition. This and several other Rilke works were translated by Mary D. Herter Norton and issued by the famed publishing house she founded with her husband.
 
Book bumped at spine ends, spine a shade toned, else Near Fine. Contemporary owner signature on front free endpaper.
 
Unclipped jacket chipped at spine ends, moderate sporadic stains, edge and general wear else Very Good.
 
“This little prose-poem about a young soldier in the Austro-Turkish war of the early 1660’s was written during a single night in 1899, when Rilke was twenty-three. It had a modest success when it first came out. But when it was republished in 1912, in a more popular format, it took Germany by storm, much to the author’s amazement. The first edition was sold out within weeks; there was one new printing after another; soldiers on the front lines during the World War I carried the book in their knapsacks, along with, possibly, the Bible. By 1920 it had sold 200,000 copies — an astounding figure for that time — and by the late ’50’s over a million. An intensely romantic meditation on the nature of masculinity, it is the book by which, among German readers, Rilke was primarily known and loved.” (Stephen Mitchell)