This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/21/2024
BELBENOIT, René (1899-1959). Dry Guillotine. Fifteen Years among the Living Dead… Illustrations by a Fellow Prisoner. New York: Blue Ribbon Books, Inc., [1940]. 8vo. Illustrated with plates. 345, [9, blank] pp. Publisher’s full light blue cloth, front board and spine stamped in dark blue, publisher’s unclipped (“100/100”) double-sided dust jacket with publisher’s catalogue on verso (cloth spine sunned and edgworn, some edgewear, soiling to boards, endleaves offset; jacket with several tape repairs to verso, spine sunned, some chipping, edgewear, several marginal tears to jacket, jacket is approximately ¼” shorter than the binding - it is unclear if it has been trimmed). Good. REPRINT EDITION, WITH A RARE INSCRIPTION BY THE AUTHOR ON THE FFEP: “To Madalynne [?] A [?] Souvenir René Belbenoit Dec. 23. 1944 Hollywood -”. With the bookplate of Gordon B. Weir on the fp. Belbenoit was a petty criminal with a history of minor thefts and scams; he was eventually arrested, tried, and sent to serve at the French penal colony in French Guiana, the infamous “Devil’s Island.” He would eventually escape the brutal prison colony and migrate to the United States (he would eventually earn United States citizenship in 1956). This book, and his other book about his brutal detention, Hell on Trial (1940), led to prison reform for French prisons.