SHADOWS THAT PASS ... Translated from the Danish by Grace Isabel Colbron. New York, London: D. Appleton and Company, 1924. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 1-225 [226] [227-228: blank] [229-230: ads], original gray cloth, front panel stamped in gold and ruled in blind, spine panel stamped in gold. First edition in English. Otto Christian Henrik Rung (1874-1945) was a Danish public servant, jurist and well-regarded novelist. SHADOWS THAT PASS, one of his finest novels, is the story of the lives of individual members of a group of young Danes, befriended by an idealistic member of their circle who dies tragically at sea but has left a fortune to be secured by one of his friends under certain conditions. Ironically, over the course of years, the fortune has been completely lost. In 1923 the Scandinavian critic, Georg Brandes wrote: "Among present Danish authors who have many essential qualities in common with Anglo-Saxon writers, but are still unknown among English-speaking peoples, may be mentioned Otto Rung. Ten years ago I wrote about him as follows: Otto Rung's books ought to be much more noticed than hitherto has been the case. He is the strongest talent of his generation, strange and bizarre, too fine for the mediocrity, too peculiar for the common mob, acutely aspiring, at times missing his aim, so that he takes the too precise for the exquisite, but so gifted that when he is successful, and when the subject adapts itself to his fundamental idea, he may create a masterpiece. In the ten years which have lapsed since then, he has developed what was in him. Like Henry James and H. G. Wells, he has a stock of profound and comprehensive culture. He has an equally great sense of history and of natural science. His unusual imagination is that of a subtle observer, forming thousands of written details into a totality and then imparting to this totality a poetic life by giving it a symbolic conception, so that the reader realizes, how the history of the times or the ever-present fights, sorrows and joys of this world are reflected on the spot described, or in the series of events narrated." - Brandes, "Far Sweeping Genius of Otto Rung," The New York Times, 8 April 1923. Some insect tracking with loss along outer front joint, a very good copy in a nearly fine dust jacket printed on red paper stock. This book is uncommon and it rarely found in its fragile red paper jacket. (#164713).
Price: $250.00
First printing has code "(1)" on page [226].