Karen Blixen Books In Order

Seven Gothic Tales

Romantics, adventurers, sensualists, melancholics and dreamers inhabit the bizarre and exotic world conjured up in these seven intricately interwoven tales, whose settings range from Tuscany and Elsinore, to a dhow on its way from Lamu to Zanzibar. Proclaimed a masterpiece on its publication in 1934, this collection is shot through with themes of love and desire from the maiden lady who now believes herself to have been the grand courtesan of her time, to the Count whose wife is so jealous that she cannot bear him to admire her jewels, and Lincoln Forsner, an Englishman whose search for a woman he met in a brothel leads him into many strange adventures.

Winter’s Tales

In Isak Dinesen’s universe, the magical enchantment of the fairy tale and the moral resonance of myth coexist with an unflinching grasp of the most obscure human strengths and weaknesses. A despairing author abandons his wife, but in the course of a long night’s wandering, he learns love’s true value and returns to her, only to find her a different woman than the one he left. A landowner, seeking to prove a principle, inadvertently exposes the ferocity of mother love. A wealthy young traveler melts the hauteur of a lovely woman by masquerading as her aged and loyal servant. Shimmering and haunting, Dinesen’s Winter’s Tales transport us, through their author’s deft guidance of our desire to imagine, to the mysterious place where all stories are born.

Last Tales

In the classic ‘Babette’s Feast,’ a mysterious Frenchwoman prepares a sumptuous feast for a gathering of religious ascetics and, in doing so, introduces them to the true essence of grace. In ‘The Immortal Story,’ a miserly old tea trader living in Canton wishes for power and finds redemption as he turns an oft told sailors’ tale into reality for a young man and woman. And in the magnificent novella Ehrengard, Dinesen tells of the powerful yet restrained rapport between a noble Wagnerian beauty and a rakish artist. Hauntingly evoked and sensuously realized, the five stories read and novella collected here have the hold of ‘fairy stories read in childhood…
of dreams…
and of our life as dreams’ The New York Times.

Anecdotes of Destiny

In the classic ‘Babette’s Feast,’ a mysterious Frenchwoman prepares a sumptuous feast for a gathering of religious ascetics and, in doing so, introduces them to the true essence of grace. In ‘The Immortal Story,’ a miserly old tea trader living in Canton wishes for power and finds redemption as he turns an oft told sailors’ tale into reality for a young man and woman. And in the magnificent novella Ehrengard, Dinesen tells of the powerful yet restrained rapport between a noble Wagnerian beauty and a rakish artist. Hauntingly evoked and sensuously realized, the five stories read and novella collected here have the hold of ‘fairy stories read in childhood…
of dreams…
and of our life as dreams’ The New York Times.

Carnival

Carnival is an animated collection of works from every stage of Isak Dinesen’s career. Many were written during her most creative years but set aside; others she wrote ‘just for entertainment.’ The collection includes ‘Second Meeting,’ her last work, and the title story, the first written under her now famous pen name. None of these stories has previously appeared in book form in English. Three of them were translated especially for this collection by P. M. Mitchell and W. D. Paden.’The editors have included only material that will stand easily with her more familiar work and satisfy her large following…
. The rough drafts and variant treatments have been set aside for scholars.’ Joseph McLellan, Washington Post ‘The wit, the imagination, the elevated philosophical dialogue mark most of the stories in this volume as vintage Dinesen…
of special interest to Dinesen fans.’ Robert Langbaum, New York Times Book Review

Out of Africa

In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives: of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom: of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her: of primitive festivals: of big game that were her near neighbors lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, buffaloes and of Lulu, the little gazelle who came to live with her, unbelievably ladylike and beautiful.

The Random House colophon made its debut in February 1927 on the cover of a little pamphlet called ‘Announcement Number One.’ Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, the company’s founders, had acquired the Modern Library from publishers Boni and Liveright two years earlier. One day, their friend the illustrator Rockwell Kent stopped by their office. Cerf later recalled, ‘Rockwell was sitting at my desk facing Donald, and we were talking about doing a few books on the side, when suddenly I got an inspiration and said, ‘I’ve got the name for our publishing house. We just said we were go ing to publish a few books on the side at random. Let’s call it Random House.’ Donald liked the idea, and Rockwell Kent said, ‘That’s a great name. I’ll draw your trademark.’ So, sitting at my desk, he took a piece of paper and in five minutes drew Random House, which has been our colophon ever since.’ Throughout the years, the mission of Random House has remained consistent: to publish books of the highest quality, at random. We are proud to continue this tradition today.

This edition is set from the first American edition of 1937 and commemorates the seventy fifth anniversary of Random House.