First edition, first impression. 204pp, with portrait plate frontispiece. Red cloth-covered boards, gilt titles on spine. 8vo. Cloth rubbed and rounded at corners and spine ends. Some faint spotting on endpapers else internally neat, clean, bright and tight. In its original illustrated dust wrapper, shelf worn, chipped all round edges, with minor loss at spine tips.
Born into a musical dynasty, Friedelind Wagner was the daughter of the German opera composer Siegfried Wagner, granddaughter of composer Richard Wagner and the great-granddaughter of composer Franz Liszt. Born in Bayreuth, she was a involved in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus but her vocal criticism of family friend Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich forced her into exile, first in Switzerland, then England where she was interned. With the aid of Italian conductor Toscanini, she moved to the United States where she assisted with anti-Nazi propaganda. These are her memoirs and recollections of those times, written in 1945 but not published until 1948.
