Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Lot 283
09.12.2020 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
£ 1 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 470352
Lot 283 | Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Estimate value
£ 1 000 – 1 500
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Selected Poems. 1952

STEVENS, Wallace (1879-1955). Selected Poems. Edited by Dennis Williamson. London: The Fortune Press, [1952].



First edition of this unauthorized and suppressed publication. It is unknown how many copies were printed, as it was withdrawn before publication. Alfred Knopf had made a contract with the Fortune Press which he eventually cancelled in favour of an agreement with Faber & Faber to publish a selection of Stevens’s verse. ‘[T]o our consternation we later heard that Fortune Press, despite the cancellation of the contract, was proceeding to publish […] he agreed to withdraw the book and destroy all copies of it except a few that had already gone out to reviewers’ (unpublished letter from Knopf to Stevens, quoted in Edelstein, p.100). Edelstein A18.



Octavo (189 x 128mm). Original black quarter cloth over black paper-covered boards, grained in imitation of alligator belly, gilt-lettered on spine, unopened (without the dustjacket).

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