The Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke by Rilke, Rainer Maria, M.D. Herter Norton (Translated) - 1932

Stated First American Edition, 1932. The translator calls this "The Tale" but other english translations call it "The Lay". Just to avoid confusion I omitted both from my title; but, as you see, Norton used 'Tale'.
Scarce VG+ no unwanted marks no past owners' names or bookplates.

"This little prose-poem about a young soldier in the Austro-Turkish war of the early 1660's was written during a single night in 1899, when Rilke was twenty-three. It had a modest success when it first came out. But when it was republished in 1912, in a more popular format, it took Germany by storm, much to the author's amazement. The first edition was sold out within weeks; there was one new printing after another; soldiers on the front lines during the World War I carried the book in their knapsacks, along with, possibly, the Bible. By 1920 it had sold 200,000 copies — an astounding figure for that time — and by the late '50's over a million. An intensely romantic meditation on the nature of masculinity, it is the book by which, among German readers, Rilke was primarily known and loved"