Julia and the Bazooka. And other stories

London: Peter Owen, 1970.

First Edition, first printing. Original yellow cloth with gilt title to spine, with the price-clipped dust-wrapper by Keith Cunningham. Without old inscriptions. Jacket slight rubbed at extremities, but still a VG+ copy. Includes an introduction by her friend, the Welsh writer Rhys Davies. A posthumous collection of 15 stories published three years after her death and considered to be some of her most personal work. Kavan was born Helen Emily Woods. Originally publishing under her first married name, Helen Ferguson, she adopted the name Anna Kavan in 1939. Living alone in London during the 1920s, she began studying painting at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts, and continued to paint throughout her life. Kavan regularly travelled to the French Riviera where she was introduced to heroin by racing car drivers she took up with. Although her early death was marked down to a heroin overdose, Kavan died of heart failure at her home in Kensington. The previous evening she had failed to show up at a reception for Anaïs Nin at the home of her publisher Peter Owen.