An Artist; With a Note by the Author Concerning the Poem...
[Austin, TX]: Privately Printed by [for] John S. Mayfield [printed by A.C. Baldwin & Sons], 1928. First Edition. Wraps. First (and only separate) printing, small quarto size, 16 pp. Near fine. Item #25112501
American poet Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) was a prolific writer of the twentieth century; his bleak and uncompromising style of poetry was formed through his philosophy of "inhumanism", which focused on a rejection of emotion and man, in favour of nature and other creatures in the universe.
This the first printed appearance of Jeffer's poem "An Artist" in its original form (see Citation below for details). Jeffers explained in the "Note" preceding the poem from whence his inspiration came: "Reading recently for the first time Oscar Wilde's 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism' I was impressed by some paragraphs about the independence of the artist; and I think that a certain (not more than emotional) sympathy with what was said lay at the origin of these verses..."
Exceptionally scarce in the marketplace, as of this writing we see only a single other copy online. Our search of OCLC locates fourty-nine copies with institutions, leaving very few available for private ownership.
___DESCRIPTION: Staple-bound, the wraps of heavy paper with Buckeye Text watermark, a black-and-white drawing tipped onto the front wrap of a sculptor "dwarfed by giant figures" (Broomfield) with the title lettered in the drawing, tipped-in frontispiece a reproduction of a photograph of Jeffers by Johan Hagemeyer, fore-edges rough-cut; paper with Buckeye Text watermark, small quarto size (10 3/4" by 7 5/8"), pagination: [i-ii, blanks] [iii, title page] [iv, copyright page] [v-viii, Essay by Benjamin DeCasseres "Robinson Jeffers: The Man" through the middle of p. viii, the bottom with a "Letter From Havelock Ellis"] [ix, sectional title page] [x, "Note" by Robinson Jeffers] [1, first page of text] [2, facsimile of the last page of the poem] [3, second page of text] [4, "A Bibliography of the Books by Robinson Jeffers" compiled by R.H. Griffith] [5, colophon] [6, blank].
___CONDITION: Near fine, the stapled binding strong with no tears to the wraps, the wraps mostly clean, the tipped-on illustration clean and without wear, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; light soil to the wraps mostly around the edges with the corners slightly creased, a small area of old stampstain on the front wrap near the bound edge (no evidence of damp inside), and a very small spot of soil on the back wrap. Overall near fine, an outstanding example of this fragile and somewhat elusive Jeffers item.
___CITATION: Alberts, no. 53; Broomfield, no. A8, which addresses the edition as follows: "Alberts reported being advised by the printer that the print run was 200 copies, of which Mayfield intended to sell only 96, and that nothing distinguished the one group of copies from the other. Alberts also reported that the publication date was uncertain and may have followed the publication of the limited and even the trade issue of 'Cawdor and Other Poems', but he concluded that this item might properly be considered the first appearance of 'An Artist' since 'Cawdor' prints a revised version of the poem" (p. 14).
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Price: $2,500.00