Shapes of Clay

San Francisco: W. E. Wood, 1903. From the Bart Auerbach Collection. Stains on seven pages from clippings once laid in, a marginal tear on a leaf from rough opening, slightly soiled on rear cover, front inner hinge tender. 8vo. Frontispiece portrait of Bierce. Original dark green cloth, gilt pictorial stamping and lettering, top edges gilt, others uncut; black cloth folding case. First edition, state 1 (BAL). This is the dedication copy to the designer of the binding, inscribed by Bierce in pencil on the front free endpaper: "To Herman Scheffauer. Bierce within and Scheff without, / This book is foreordained, no doubt, / To fame whene'er (all other books / Being lost) the last man living looks / For something great in art and rhyme / To help him pass away the time. / Ambrose Bierce / Oct. 30, 1903." The printed dedication reads: "With pride in their work, faith in their future and affection for themselves, an old writer dedicates this book to his young friends and pupils, George Sterling and Herman Scheffauer."

In the spring of 1903 the two protégés induced Wood to publish a collection of Bierce's poetry, which had appeared in his columns over the previous twenty years. Sterling raised the money for the publication and Scheffauer, an architect by profession and a poet by avocation, designed the striking pictorial binding. In 1927 Scheffauer "joined a long list of Bierce associates who met macabre ends – in his instance, by fatally stabbing his wife and leaping to his death from a hotel window" (Roy Morris, Jr., 'Ambrose Bierce,' 1996, p. 229). Laid in is a four-page promotional leaflet for the book. Starrett A17: "A large part of the first edition... was destroyed, it is said, in the San Francisco fire." BALL 1122. (BA).