Memorie Autobiografiche
New York: A. Salsedo, [1917].
First edition. 203 pp. Bound in publisher's wraps illustrated with skull design. Text in Italian. Very Good+ with small remnant of a label on the front wrap, light wear, pages towards rear uncut. Very nice shape for a vintage paperback. Rare, with four institutional copies located in OCLC, often wrongly dated 1929. The memoirs of a French anarchist and thief, dragged from the court room shouting "Long live anarchy!" and imprisoned for his crimes on Devil's Island, off the coast of the South American colony of French Guiana. He somehow escaped and made it to New York where he would live the rest of his life in the active Galleanist wing of anarchism, an Italian-centric movement that embraced the terrorist illegalism Duval practiced in France and Duval himself as a celebrity. The story of his escape from Devil's Island reputedly inspired French criminal-turned-author Henri Charrière's 1969 bestselling novel Papillon. The book's publisher, Andrea Salsedo, planned this excerpt from Duval's larger memoirs as the first volume of many, but was arrested for his anarchist beliefs by the American Bureau of Investigation (prototype of the FBI) in late February 1920. May 3, 1920 Salsedo's body was found in front of the BOI's Park Row offices in NYC, Salsedo having apparently spent the preceding weeks being interrogated (to put it mildly), perhaps snitching on his comrades, and either deciding to commit suicide or being suicided out of a 14th floor window. Two days later famous anarchist martyrs Sacco and Vanzetti would be arrested.
Price: $1,200