My Life

First English language edition, first impression.  xii, 218pp, with colour plate frontispiece and further monochrome plate illustrations.  .  Green publisher's cloth-covered boards, gilt-stamped lettering front and spine, with blind embossed motif on front panel.  Top edge gilt.  8vo.  Cloth is worn and marked, faded titles, rubbed and rounded at corners and ends of a lightly sunned spine.  Fore and lower text block edges spotted.  Endpapers a little toned and marked; previous owner's name on front free endpaper, else internally neat, clean and tight. Scarce.  Emma Calve (1858-1942) was a French opera singer, and international performer and for a long time the leading voice of the Belle Epoque. Her career as a Metropolitan opera singer ended abruptly in 1904 when she walked off stage when she didn't get her own way about musical tone.  Later in life she develop a serious interest in paranormal and was at one point engaged the occult author Jules Bois.