Our Notes & References

Fine example of the first edition of this “political-espionage novel […] a very important book” (Skinner).

A suppressed edition – now rare: no copies traced at auctions in recent decades; OCLC locates only two holdings in the US (Yale, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), and a few in the UK, Ireland, and Australia.

Born in Istanbul to a family of a Dutch diplomat, Odette Keun (1888-1978) led an eventful life. She initially resolved to become a nun, but soon travelled through the Algerian desert with her lover, contributing to healthcare initiatives for the local Berber population. Shortly later, in 1919-20, “when virtually every valley in the Caucasus declared its independence, the Red Army was approaching, and bandits infested the area, Odette, in her early thirties, travelled on horseback with a group of soldiers and a consort into the forests and mountains of Georgia” (Reintjes).

On her return to Istanbul in 1921, she was arrested by the British military police “for Bolshevism and Communism” and deported to Russia, where she remained in the hands of the security services for three months before being released to the West. A partner of H. G. Wells from 1924 to 1933, she later worked as a secretary at the consul-general in the United States and eventually settled in England.

Inspired by her travels in the Social-Democratic Republic of Georgia during its brief period of independence, and by her love affair with a local prince, Keun wrote this “very important book, […] a political-espionage novel” (Skinner). Her only other book devoted to Georgia, Au Pays de la Toison d’or [In the Land of the Golden Fleece: Through Independent Menchevist Georgia] (1924), was described by Professor Stephen Jones as “a remarkable ethnographic work on the regions of Georgia with feminine insights” (quoted by Skinner).

Of a total print run of 502 copies (Evening Post, 1928), “only a few are known to have survived” (Skinner). Soon after publication, Prince Tariel was “suppressed for libel following a court case brought against the author and publisher by Colonel Ernest Cassel Mawell, second in command of the 1st battalion of the Cheshire Regiment, who complained that one of characters in the book, ‘Major Cassel,’ was painted ‘in the most lurid colours’ which would, he claimed, lead to his being ostracised as a ‘social parasite with whom no decent man would associate'” (Kearney). Colonel Cassel was apparently among the leaders of the Inter-Allied Police responsible for Keun’s deportation in 1921, and she “attributed all her sufferings in Russia to him” (Evening Post). Keun’s defence claimed that rather than being written as an act of revenge, the passages in question were merely “purple-patches by a woman writer of fiction” (Kearney).

Despite the trial, a Dutch translation appeared in 1926, with a French edition following the year after; the latter is not uncommon.

Provenance

Acquired from Peter Skinner (b. 1938, British-born, American-based historian and writer specialising in Georgia and the Caucasus).

Bibliography

Kearney, Patrick. “The ARC erotica collection of Cambridge University Library”; “Libelled Officer,” O. Keun’s Trial, London // Evening Post, February 23, 1928; Reintjes, Monique. Odette Keun, Amsterdam, Reintjes, 2000; Skinner, Peter. “The Forgotten Traveler: Carla Serena (1829-1884)” // The Kartvelologist. Journal of Georgian Studies.