HUYSMANS, Joris Karl; Keene WALLIS (translator). Là Bas (Down There).

HUYSMANS, Joris Karl; Keene WALLIS (translator). Là Bas (Down There). Chicago: The Black Archer Press. 1935.

8vo. Original red cloth, spine blocked in gilt, black endpapers, in dust-jacket designed by William Mazur; pp. 327, [1], with frontispiece designed by John Groth, title-page by G. Arthur Gillis printed in red and black; spine ends a little worn, slight staining to lower edge of front cover, spotting to upper edge of text-block, jacket with spine toned, and spine ends and corners chipped with tiny losses; light dampstaining to lower margin of frontispiece and first 6ll, slight foxing to prelims, but overall a very good, clean copy; early ink ownership stamp of Kenneth Ness, possibly the Michigan artist (1903–2001), to verso of front free endpaper.

Second US edition, limited to only 850 copies for subscribers, of ‘the strangest book ever written’ (blurb), in the rare dust-jacket and with a haunting frontispiece by John Groth (1908–1988).

First published in French in 1891, Là-Bas is one of the most influential literary explorations of fin-de-siècle decadence and occultism. The novel follows the writer Durtal, who, disenchanted with modern life, immerses himself in the worlds of medieval mysticism, Satanism, and the occult. Assisted by his lover, Madame Chantelouve, he investigates contemporary black masses while researching the notorious fifteenth-century nobleman and serial killer Gilles de Rais (c. 1405–1440).

The first English translation, by Keene Wallis, appeared in New York in 1924 from Albert & Charles Boni and was privately reprinted in Paris in 1928. This Black Archer Press edition, issued in Chicago in 1930 under the direction of bookseller and editor William Targ (1907–1999), was produced by arrangement with Boni using Wallis’s copyrighted translation, but with the text entirely reset. Featuring a frontispiece by John Groth, a title-page by G. Arthur Gillis, and a striking dust-jacket design by William Mazur, it was limited to 850 copies and prefaced by a note restricting its sale to ‘members of the Clergy, members of the learned professions and serious adult students of psychology, religion and occultism’.

SKU: 2125810