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13 BISHOP, Elizabeth. Geography III. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976 A formidable poetic couple First edition, first printing, review copy with the publisher’s compliments slip laid-in, inscribed by the author on the title page to fellow poet Elizabeth McFarland, “For Liz Hoffman – love – from Elizabeth Bishop, Nov. 11th 1979”, with one sheet of hand-corrected typed notes by poet Daniel Hoffman, husband of Elizabeth, introducing a reading by Bishop at the University of Pennsylvania. Elizabeth McFarland (1922–2005) was poetry editor of Ladies’ Home Journal from 1948–1962, and an instrumental figure in broadening the influence of eminent poets like W. H. Auden, Marianne Moore, Richard Eberhart, and Walter de la Mare, and popularizing promising upcomers like Maxine Kumin, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, William Stafford, and John Updike. Daniel (1923–2013) called his wife a “one-woman Guggenheim Foundation” as she fought for fair pay for poets. Together they were a formidable poetic pairing: he was the 22nd Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a much-decorated author of nine books of poetry, and the Felix E. Schelling Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Bishop was invited to the university in 1979 to award a number of annual poetry prizes, including the Ellis Ames Ballard memorial prize, and give a reading of her own work. Daniel’s introduction refers to this, “her most recent book”, and praises Bishop’s career: “there is no prize of honor for a poet in this country which has not been given to Elizabeth Bishop . . . when we read [her] poems we feel as does the old fisherman in her poem ‘At the Fishhouses’, dipping his hand into the sea”. Bishop has misdated her inscription: she died on 6 October 1979 of a stroke. This copy was likely signed in the year of publication. Geography III was her last work and won the Book Critics’ Circle Award for 1977. “This volume of nine beautifully crafted poems returns to themes of North and South but with greater intimacy and immediacy” ( ANB ).
Octavo. Original brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt, tan endpapers. With dust jacket. Illustrated title page. Loosely inserted are two newspaper clippings, one a review of Geography III , the other an obituary of Bishop. Trivial scratch to rear cover, front inner hinge just starting. A near-fine copy in fine jacket. ¶ Dan Hoffman, “Elizabeth McFarland, a Poet Who Brought Poetry to the Millions”, Poetry Society , available online. £4,750 [155736] 14 BLAKE, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. [London: J. C. Hotten, 1868] Owned by Ford Madox Brown, who thought Blake “the most imaginative artist who ever lived” First edition thus, the first facsimile of any of Blake’s illuminated books, one of 150 copies printed, and this copy with a stupendous artist’s provenance. It was owned by the Pre-Raphaelite artist
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