Anna Croissant Rust / Willi Geiger - Der Tod - 1914

Anna Croissant Rust - Der Tod.
Ein Zyklus von siebzehn Bildern mit siebzehn Zeichnungen von Willy Geiger
Munich - Müller, 1914.
Original hardcover binding with gold lettering.
First edition of 800 numbered copies (No. 683). –
115 + 2 pages - 22.5 x 16.5 cm
Seventeen full-page black-and-white illustrations by Willi Geiger.
Slight signs of wear and partial loss of the title’s gilding.
(see photo) Overall, in very good condition.

Croissant-Rust (1860–1943) arrived in Munich in 1884,
where she worked as a language and music teacher.
She became acquainted with Michael Georg Conrad’s circle,
and was welcomed as
the sole female member into his “Gesellschaft für modernes Leben.” In 1887 she wrote her first novella,
*Das Kind*, published in Conrad’s monthly magazine *Die Gesellschaft*.
With *Feierabend. Münchner Arbeiter-Novelle* (1890), a raw
depiction of working-class life, she became known to a wide readership.
Married in 1888, she moved with her husband to Ludwigshafen in 1895
and did not return to Munich until 1904, where her home became
a well-known literary gathering place.
In 1906 and 1908, she published her two novels, *Die Nann* and *Winkelquartett*.
The cycle *Der Tod*, published in 1914 and illustrated by Willy Geiger—
a literary danse macabre—demonstrates this writer’s stylistic evolution
from Art Nouveau to pre-Expressionist approaches.