First edition, first impression. 204pp, with portrait plate frontispiece. Red cloth-covered boards, gilt titles on spine. 8vo. Cloth a little faded at edges, soft and rubbed over spine, with rounded spine tips. Some mild offset tanning on endpapers else internally neat, clean, bright and tight. In its original illustrated dust wrapper, shelf worn, rubbed all round edges, chipped at spine ends with minor loss at spine head, soiled on verso.
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 led her to exile first in Switzerland, then England where she was interned. With the help of the Italian conductor Toscanini, she relocated to the United States where she became involved with anti-Nazi propaganda. These are her memoirs and recollections of those times, written in 1945 although not published until 1948.
