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The Taxco School of Art, Published 1959. Hardcover, 148 pp.; 22 cm; imprint "Printed in Mexico, Dec. 1960" on title-page verso with date corrected in ink to "59"; illustrated with full-page line drawings. Introduction by H. Allen Smith; illustrations by Dr. Juan B. Meana.
In Good condition, no dust jacket. Gray cloth boards with gilt lettering and gilt drawing of tourists on front, lettering on spine; mild to moderate shelf and edge wear, scattered spotting and soiling to both covers, some scuffing and soiling to lettering. Binding tight. Inscribed by the author on front free endpaper ("With a smile - Leslie C. de Figueroa."). Endpapers mildly toned; pages otherwise unmarked. Comic novel of the American colony in Taxco, published in English by the Taxco School of Art, which the author's husband, Fidel Figueroa, founded. The narrator, a New York writer and self-confessed stuffed shirt, is brought to Taxco by his wife and daughter to house-sit for an archaeologist aunt, and resists the town for most of the book. Real Taxco people and places appear among the invented characters: William Spratling, the earlier art school of the Japanese painter Tamiji Kitagawa, Juan O'Gorman's mosaic mural at the Posada de la Mision, and the illustrator Dr. Juan B. Meana himself, cast as the town's society doctor. In his introduction, the humorist H. Allen Smith names the author the nicest person in Taxco and recalls that she and her husband once owned Paco's Bar. Meana's drawings caricature tourists, burros and residents. Contents: Pulled Up by the Roots; We Look at a City; Secrets of an Emperor; A Hilltown and New Friends; Archeology and Romance; Dining Out and a Telephone Call; Big Game Hunting (Husbands); Little Pink Pigs and Strange Americans; Blonde Baroness and the Wandering Smiths; Artists, Writers, Musicians, Singers; The Foreign Colony She-Wolves; Nudes and Screwballs; Haciendas and Disturbing Mail; Sanitation a la Snooks; Mr. Spratling and Acapulco; Fireworks and Farewells; Cocktails and Confessions; New York and Old Friends; I Lose My Bet.