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Puritan – and her work continues to suggest how complex such categories can be” ( ANB ). Duodecimo (151 × 93 mm). Recent sprinkled calf to style, red morocco spine label, raised bands, gilt twin fillets on spine and boards, new endpapers preserving earlier front free endpaper with early female ownership. Woodcut printer’s ornaments. Signature of “Samuel Buell’s Book 1773” on title page and “Polly Buel[l] Owner” on preserved front free endpaper (one letter obscured by loss) – being Reverend Samuel Buell (1716–1798) and his daughter Mary Polly Buell (1768–1849). Contents browned and occasionally foxed, trimmed close in places (in some cases slightly shaving text but sense fully recoverable), repaired closed tear at outer edge of R1, some page numbers and catchwords affected by print shop accidents, with resulting tiny holes and short tears neatly repaired (R2, T1, Aa5–6, Bb1), some with pen facsimile, small instances of loss professionally infilled (upper margin of T5, outer corners of title lead and Bb2–6). Overall a very good copy. ¶ ESTC W22243; Evans, American Bibliography , 8091; Sabin 7298; Stoddard & Whitesell, A Bibliographical Description of Books and Pamphlets of American Verse , 116; Wegelin, Early American Poetry, 30. This edition is ascribed by Evans and others to have been printed in Boston, but Stoddard & Whitesell suggest Newport, Rhode Island, identifying the printer’s ornaments as used by Anne Smith Franklin or James Franklin Jr. £60,000 [157473] 25 BRANSON, Helen P. Gay Bar. San Francisco: Pan-Graphic Press, 1957 First edition, first printing. Helen Branson ran a gay bar in Los Angeles in the 1950s, at a time when California statutes prohibited homosexuals from gathering in bars. Branson was a heterosexual divorced grandmother, who describes herself as looking like “your sixth grade teacher or the librarian in the Maple Street branch library”. Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine and front cover lettered in green. With dust jacket. With one full-page caricature of Branson as a mother hen. Spine ends a touch rubbed and bumped, else a fine copy in
very good jacket, lightly toned with a few small chips and nicks to extremities, front joint split but holding, price sticker on front flap ($6.99), still a very attractive example. £750 [161440] 26 BRINKMAN, Estelle. The Perfumed Savage. Chicago: Gutenberg Press, 1933 “a mad, sensuous tapestry of unforgettable delight”, inscribed First edition, sole printing, of this scarce collection of homoerotic feminist poetry, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper: “To Venea Voelker Ever Sincerely Estelle Brinkman, October 22 1933”. Loosely inserted, and seemingly once tipped-in at the endpapers, is an invitation to the book’s launch event on 7 January 1933, and a programme for an exhibition of Brinkman’s sculptures, on which she has written “Or did I send you this before? Estelle”. The exhibition, held at the Artists Gallery in Chicago, featured sculptures and preliminary sketches of the characters who appear in the present work. This collection of poems was Brinkman’s only published work. It was printed in a small run by the short-lived Gutenberg Press, active from 1932 to 1933. It is subsequently uncommon, with three copies traced institutionally worldwide, all in the US. The striking cover design was by artist and architect Edgar Miller, one of the founding members of the Old Town artists colony. Octavo. Original printed boards, spine lettered vertically in white, lettering and illustration of a woman incorporated in art deco design by Edgar Miller across covers in black, dark red, and white, fore edge untrimmed. Frontispiece by the author. Spine browned, touch of wear to ends, rubbing to extremities, marks from glue residue to pastedowns, contents clean and bright; a very good copy. £2,750 [148889]
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24 BRADSTREET, Anne. Several Poems Compiled with great Variety of Wit and Learning, full of Delight . . . By a Gentlewoman in New-England. [Newport, Rhode Island?:] Re-printed from the second Edition [by Anne Smith Franklin or James Franklin, Jr?], 1758 The first female poet and the first colonial poet in English The earliest edition to be realistically obtainable as a complete copy, by the writer credited as not only “the first American to publish a book of poetry” ( ANB ) but also “the first English woman and the first New Englander to publish a collection of original poems, and so may claim to be both the first female poet and the first colonial poet in English” ( ODNB ). Born in England, Anne Bradstreet (1612/13–1672) moved to America in 1630. The Bradstreets were one of the most politically significant families in 17th-century New England, with both Anne’s father and husband serving as governor of Massachusetts. Bradstreet was dedicated to poetry from an early age. Following the circulation of her work in manuscript, her poems were first published in London in 1650, without
her knowledge or consent, under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America . A greatly expanded edition was posthumously published in America in 1678. Both editions are exceedingly rare on the market, and very possibly unprocurable in a complete state – a copy of the 1650 edition was last recorded at auction in 1979, that lacking leaves, with three other copies known to have passed through the hands of William Reese in the last three decades, also incomplete; a copy of the 1678 edition is last recorded at auction in 1948, again lacking leaves. This edition of 1758 is consequently the earliest of which complete copies circulate, and is still extremely rare. Textually, it reprints that of 1678, with the errata corrected. Bradstreet’s “work was highly valued in her time (hers was the only book of poetry found in Edward Taylor’s library at his death), devalued in the nineteenth century, and appreciated anew in the twentieth. It is avowedly Puritan but multivocal, sometimes patriarchal, sometimes feminist . . . throughout Bradstreet’s work the largest issues and greatest truths find expression in humble details, and those details are in turn examined for what they will reveal of God . . . She was what she appeared to be – a poet, a woman, and a
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
LOUDER THAN WORDS
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