THE SECRET LIFE OF SALVADOR DALI

New York: The Dial Press, 1942.. Large, thick octavo. Cloth, with pictorial cover vignette label and spine label. Color double-spread frontis. Illustrations, plates and photographs. Cloth very slightly faded, spine label rather chipped, rear endsheets darkened with gutter discoloration from now absent unknown tip-in. A good copy, without the dust jacket, First edition, trade issue. With a full-page, expansive presentation inscription from Dali incorporting a drawing of a picador-like figure in horeseback: "Pour Jean Deering Hommage Amiable de Salvador Dali 1954." Affixed to the verso of the opposite blank is a 2 3/4 x 4 inch vintage print of a photograph of Dali with the recipient, with a manuscript caption affixed below: "Jean Bartlet Deering Salvadore [sic] Dali St. Regis Hotel, New York, NY 1942." Accompanied by another loose photograph from the same sitting, though somewhat out of focus. Accompanied by yet another photograph, captioned and dated 1943 on the verso, roughly the same dimensions but with the border trimmed, of the recipient posing with Dali's painting "Geopliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man." According to the caption on the verso, Jean Deering owned the painting at the time, which was sold at Dali's first US exhibition at Knoedler's. Also present is a portion of a newspaper clipping with a photograph identifying "pretty, 23-year-old Jean Deering" as the organizer of an exhibition at the Stuart Art Galleries of "psycho-symbolic art."