Romantic Legends of Spain

New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1909. Hardcover. Good+. Second Edition. Boards in red cloth with front cover decoratively stamped in gilt and blind. Spine is darkened; cloth is worn at spine ends and corners. Previous owner's name on front pastedown. Minor dampstaining to top lip of some pages. 16 illustrated plates, including frontispiece. xxviii, 271 pages. Twenty-one strange and supernatural tales by the Spanish writer and poet, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (1836-1870). Includes an 18-page introduction to Becquer and his works. The previous owner, whose name appears at the front, was Marie Cecile Centlivre (1901-1976) of Fort Wayne, Indiana, an actress who appeared on Broadway stage productions and in silent movies and was a Ziegfeld Follies girl. Her life and career were unusual. In 1917, she and the famous painter and playwright, Ira Mallory Remsen, staged a fake marriage in Greenwich Village as a publicity stunt ahead of the production of his play ''The Man Who Married an Ostrich.'' During the later-1920s, she was in a common-law marriage with the syndicated cartoonist Clare Briggs. Following his death, through the 1930s and 40s, she continued to be a prominent figure in the Fort Wayne theater scene. She was the daughter of the founder of the Centlivre Brewery, a fixture in Fort Wayne from 1862 to 1961.