E. E. Cummings: A Miscellany
New York: The Argophile Press, 1958. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Item #18516
Very Good, bound in original blue cloth covered boards. Original tissue jacket present, fragile, chipped edges and toned. A few small bumps to exterior. Toning to interior. No markings to text. 8vo, 9"h x 6 1/2"w.
The true first edition of the only gathering of Cummings's occasional prose to appear in his lifetime, edited with introduction and notes by George J. Firmage and carrying the poet's own brief foreword. The volume collects—in Cummings's words—"a cluster of epigrams," forty-nine essays, a poem, and several speeches from an unfinished play, drawing together pieces written across decades for magazines, anthologies, and gallery catalogues, many originally published under pseudonyms or anonymously. Ranging from Cubism and Krazy Kat to the circus and the New York art world, these are the sharp, playful, fiercely independent prose works of one of America's essential modernists, assembled here for the first time. A scarce title, scarcer still in the original glassine, and a cornerstone for any serious Cummings or twentieth-century literature collection.
Price: $475.00