Title: A Stranger Still
Author: Anna Kavan
Published: 1995
Publisher: Peter Owen, London
First edition thus/first impression (‘First published in Great Britain 1935                                              Published in this edition 1995’); UK; hardback with dust wrapper (not price-clipped, showing £15.95); covered in clear, removable protective wrapper

Very Good+ /Very Good+ : a bit of bumping at head & foot of spine and at board corners, one small mark to exterior of text block, erased pencil at top right corner of front free endpaper, otherwise internally clean & unmarked; dust wrapper has just a bit of minor shelfwear to edges, one small spot on rear panel

First published under the name Helen Ferguson, by Jonathan Cape in 1935, A Stranger Still follows a wealthy family through 1930s London, Paris and the South of France. The writer identified so strongly with the autobiographical character of ‘Anna Kavan’, that she adopted this nom de plume herself in 1939. This is the first publication of the novel since the Cape true first edition, and the first issued under the author’s pseudonym.

Anna Kavan was a British novelist, short story writer and painter. Originally publishing under her first married name, Helen Ferguson, she adopted the name Anna Kavan in 1939, not only as a nom de plume but as her legal identity. Her writings have been compared to Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Brian Aldiss described her as Kafka's sister. Anaïs Nin was an admirer and unsuccessfully pursued a correspondence with Kavan. Other admirers have included Doris Lessing, J G Ballard, Jean Rhys, Christopher Priest, Nina Allan, Virginia Ironside and Maggie Gee.

Although popularly supposed to have died of heroin overdose, Kavan died of heart failure at her home in Kensington and was found dead on 5 December 1968.

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