Search results 3 Found

First printing. A near-fine copy, without a jacket. A clean, unmarked copy. Note: Some offsetting on pastedowns. Two small stickers on front endpaper.

First impression of the first UK edition, which was printed using American sheets - this copy retaining the original fragile dustwrapper. The book was originally published in the USA by Harper & Brothers, New York. With a three-page Foreword and details of the Characters by the author. ***Near fine in blue cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to the spine. The boards are clan and unmarked having been protected by the dustwrapper. the gilt is still beautifully bright. No bumps or creases. Corners sharp. Head and tail of spine just slightly rubbed. Spine unfaded and clean. No reading lean to the binding. Spine tight. Internally also near fine with no ownership inscriptions. No foxing. Pages clean - just a small pen mark on the front free endpaper. ***In a very good dustwrapper, which is printed on very thin paper, but is virtually complete. The dustwrapper has not been price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's printed price of 6s. net. Apart from a small area of loss at the top of the spine, there is no loss - just some general edge wear, rubbing and creasing. The spine of the dustwrapper is slightly browned, and the titles have faded, but the titles on the front panel are clear and unfaded. ***207mm x 140mm. xv prelim-pages plus 126 pages of text. ***'The manuscript of "Conversation at Midnight" was destroyed by fire about a year ago, when the Palms Hotel on Sanibel Island burned down. Before coming north after a winter in Florida I had wished to visit the islands of Sanibel and Captiva, to look for sea-shells, of which there are some very fine ones to be found on these beaches. I arrived at the Palms Hotel an hour or so before sunset, engaged a room, and had my luggage sent up. I did not go up to the room myself; I went out at once upon the beach to gather shells. Looking back up the beach a few minutes later, I saw the hotel in flames. "Conversation at Midnight" as printed here is made up of poems from the first draft, remembered word for word; poems incompletely remembered, and reconstructed; and new poems written within the last year.' (Quote taken from the Author's Foreword). ***'Edna St. Vincent Millay (Feb 22, 1892 - Oct 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. Millay was a renowned social figure and noted feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her poem "Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"; she was the first woman and second person to win the award. Millay was highly regarded during much of her lifetime, with the prominent literary critic Edmund Wilson calling her "one of the only poets writing in English in our time who have attained to anything like the stature of great literary figures.'' By the 1930s, her critical reputation began to decline, as modernist critics dismissed her work for its use of traditional poetic forms and subject matter, in contrast to modernism's exhortation to "make it new." However, the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1960s and 1970s revived an interest in Millay's works.' ***'A long verse poem passionately searching for new gods to replace tattered idols. It is a sequence that provides daring and provocative expression in the dialogue between six men of widely different tastes to explore the new thinking of the time. After a kerosene heater exploded in a hotel in which Millay was staying in 1936, the ensuing fire destroyed the only copy of this work. She would go on to rewrite it from memory and release it the following year.' (Wiki) ***First impression of the first UK edition. The UK edition is far scarcer than the American, and scarce in the dustwrapper. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc.