Elephant's Breath. Some Curious Occurrences Related in Prose and Verse

New York: Privately Printed, 1929. From the Bart Auerbach Collection. Large 8vo. Illustrated with drawings by the author. Original pictorial dark gray wrappers over stiff wrapper (inch piece chipped from heel of spine); in a maroon half-morocco slipcase. First (and only) edition of the author's first book, a collection of prose poems and enigmatic vignettes, limited to 100 copies only (this is no. 34), printed at the Plandome Press. This copy is inscribed in ink on the front free endpaper: "For Father, with the compliments of the author, Nelson W. Brinckerhoff." The author was a sometime expatriate and a friend of Glenway Westcott. His satirical illustrations are variously in the styles of Beardsley, Harry Clarke, and Covarrubias.

With: A file of galleys and correspondence relating to the book: two sets of long galleys (one marked up with corrections by the author, one clean); four sets of page proofs (one denoted "incorrect page proofs" by him); a set of proofs of the illustrations with captions in ink by the author; three TLSs from the Plandome Press about production matters, plus their invoice for the printing; a letter and a proof pertaining to an ad for the book; two copyright deposit copies of the book, with accompanying documentation, as returned to the author by the Library of Congress. [BA].