Prins, Sonja. Front. No. 1-4

The Hague, Servire, 1930-1931. 4 issues, (4), 96; 97-192,(8); 193-288 p.; (4),289-392,(4)p. orig. wr., large 8vo. Complete and fine set of the extremely rare left wing literary avant-garde periodical founded and edited by the then 18-year old Dutch poet Sonja Prins. Containing contributions by i.a. Erik Reger, Ezra Pound, Norman MacLeod, S. Tretyakov, Carl Einstein, Paul Peters, Walter Mehring, Roger Vitrac, Paul Bowles, William Carlos Williams, Eugene Jolas, Vladimir Maiakovski and John Dos Passos.

*Sonja Prins was 17 when she founded the magazine Front with money inherited from her grandmother. She managed to attract leading international authors such as Ezra Pound, Vladimir Maiakovski and Paul Bowles, but after four issues publication ceased due to lack of money. In the same year, Prins joined the Communist Party. During the Second World War she co-created the underground newspaper Vonk, for which she and her mother were arrested and imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp. She survived by writing and producing theatre. (She renounced her Communist Party membership after the Hungarian uprising in 1956.) During the past 36 years of her life she lived as a recluse in the woods of Baarle-Nassau, where she continued to write poetry.