Body’s Breviary

Pamphlet. 7 1/8 x 4 3/4 inches. [ii], 30, [2] pp. Printed in red and black ink throughout; text unmarked with occasional light marginal soiling. Wrappers printed in red and black; binding square and tight, light shelf wear and soiling. SCARCE in the market. ST1021-006. Very Good.

LIMITED EDITION, printed by Gregg Anderson for presentation to the members of the Zamorano Club, limitation not stated. Only a few copies were produced for the Zamorano Club. Presented by Robert E. Cowan.

Ward Ritchie met Gregg Anderson in 1928, when Ritchie was 22 years old; Anderson was 19 or 20. Ritchie and Anderson were to form the company, Anderson, Ritchie, and Simon, before Gregg Anderson died tragically on July 5, 1944. In the meantime, this book was undertaken by Ritchie, Powell, and Anderson in a studio in Clyde Brown's Abbey of San Encino. "Gregg had long wanted to do a book to give to the Zamorano Club. In fact, he had started it a year or so before, had printed a few pages which he hadn't liked, and quit. With our new set-up operating, he revived this project, Body's Breviary by Joseph Warren Beach. It was a piece which he had read in the American Mercury, and had liked. He got permission to print it from the publisher but never heard from the author until after it was printed…. From the standpoint of design this was the first mature piece Gregg had done. It was restrained, delicately arranged, and well conceived." Ritchie, The Ward Ritchie Press and Anderson, Ritchie & Simon, pp. 19-20.

Joseph Warren Beach was an American poet, novelist, critic, educator and literary scholar. Beach graduated from the University of Minnesota, where his uncle Cyrus Northrop was President, in 1900; he went on to earn an MA and PhD (1907) from Harvard. Beach returned to the University of Minnesota in the English Department. Beach published a number of works of poetry, literary criticism, and fiction. His first volume of poetry, Sonnets of the Head and Heart (1903) must have been the source for this collection printed by Gregg Anderson in 1930. REFERENCE: Fullerton, et al, The Zamorano Club, No. 19. Worldcat records 10 holdings in the US.