THIS IS THE HOUR: Translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter and Frances Fawcett

New York: The Viking Press, 1951. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Signed and dated in the year of publication by Lion Feuchtwanger on the front flyleaf. Novel about Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746-1828) and his transition from court painter for Charles IV to a painter with a political conscience who used his art to protest Spain's repressive policies. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, Feuchtwanger (1884-1958) was a fierce critic of the National Socialist German Workers Party, years before it assumed power, which made him a target of government-sponsored persecution after Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Following a brief period of internment in France and a harrowing escape from Europe, he found asylum in the United States, where he and his wife, Marta, became prominent members of the German emigre community in Southern California. Villa Aurora, their house in Pacific Palisades, was a meeting place for fellow exiles like Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Arnold Schoenberg, Vicki Baum, Bruno Frank, Ludwig Marcuse, Franz Werfel, and Bertolt Brecht. Octavo. Original yellow cloth-covered boards over a red cloth spine, with black and gold stamping. Some occasional edgewear to the dust jacket, with a few unobtrusive tape mends; otherwise very good.