Saturday, December 08, 2007
First Impressions Are Misleading
An entertaining review in the Times of London today of a bio of Henry Miller's man in Paris, Jack Kahane:
Kahane was the kind of roguish publisher that most writers are glad to know exists, but are grateful not to be dependent on. His first successful title was Daffodil (1931) by Cecil Barr, aka Jack Kahane. According to Neil Pearson in his highly entertaining Obelisk: A history of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press, the first edition was issued as “3rd impression”, in order to “give the appearance of healthy sales, and so stimulate demand”. The second impression became the “5th”, the third the “9th”, and so on towards a mythical eighteen printings recorded by trusting historians such as Hugh Ford in his seminal book, Published in Paris (1975).
