signed first edition
1931 · New York
by STEVENS, Wallace
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931. Second Edition. First printing of the Revised Second Edition. Fourth binding (tan cloth). Octavo; cloth hardcover with printed paper spine label; dustjacket; 151pp. Novelist and poet John Clellon Holmes's copy, with his ownership signature to front endpaper, datemarked Columbia University, 1946. Darkening to cloth at crown of spine, else a tight, Near Fine copy. In the original dustwrapper, chipped a extremities; front panel, which was once completely detached at spine-fold, has been minimally mended with archival tissue; conspicuously darkened on spine panel, but still presentable and Good. EDELSTEIN A1b.
This edition, substantially revised, adds fourteen poems not present in the first edition. Sheets of the second edition were bound up over a period of thirteen years, this being the final iteration of 397 copies, bound in tan cloth in 1944. John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) was a student at Columbia when he purchased this copy; in 1952 he would publish his first novel, Go, considered by most critics to be the first "beat" novel, a fictional portrayal of his relationship with his friends Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg. Holmes would popularize the phrase "the Beat Generation" in a New York Times article of the same year, beginning a long and influential literary career that would continue up to his death from cancer in 1988. (Inventory #: 59298)
This edition, substantially revised, adds fourteen poems not present in the first edition. Sheets of the second edition were bound up over a period of thirteen years, this being the final iteration of 397 copies, bound in tan cloth in 1944. John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) was a student at Columbia when he purchased this copy; in 1952 he would publish his first novel, Go, considered by most critics to be the first "beat" novel, a fictional portrayal of his relationship with his friends Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg. Holmes would popularize the phrase "the Beat Generation" in a New York Times article of the same year, beginning a long and influential literary career that would continue up to his death from cancer in 1988. (Inventory #: 59298)