THE DIARY OF "HELENA MORLEY

New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957. First printing (stated). Near fine in very good plus jacket.. First edition of Morley (Brant)'s adolescent diary in Bishop's translation from the Portuguese. Alice Deyrell Caldeira Brant began keeping diaries in 1893, the 12-year-old daughter of a diamond miner in the small Brazilian town of Diamantina; their first publication (in Brazil in 1942) was arranged by her husband and edited to omit any and all reference to their meeting and courtship. At the time of Bishop's English translation, the author was 76, happy to meet the poet and expand on her old stories, living proof that "it really happened; everything did take place, day by day, minute by minute, once and only once, just the way Helena says it did" (Bishop). 8.25'' x 5.5''. Original quarter yellow cloth with gray-green decorative boards. In original unclipped ($4.75) first-state dust jacket by Harry Ford. Yellow topstain. Photographic endpapers. 281, [1] pages. Light edgewear to boards and jacket, minor soil and scuffing to extremities.