POEMS
signed first edition
1947 · NY
by SMITH, William Jay
NY: The Banyan Press, 1947. First Edition. 8vo, pp. 31. Bound in cloth backed printed boards, One of 500 numbered copies. This copy signed by the author. The author's first book. The book was hand set in Weiss and Geramond faces printed on Enfield paper. A fine copy. William Jay Smith was born in Winnfield, Louisiana. He was brought up at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, south of St. Louis. Smith received his A.B. and M.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, and continued his studies at Columbia University, and Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Smith is the author of ten collections of poetry of which two were finalists for the National Book Award. He was appointed the nineteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1968 to 1970. (Inventory #: 58420)