Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$650.00 + shipping
Description: 8vo. [8], 32, [2] pp. Woodcut-engraved frontisp. by Ray Boynton. Vellum-backed gray boards, vellum corners, printed spine label, w/ original open-backed gray slipcase (very minor edgewear, wear to 1 corner), still F/VG copy, signed by both author & artist on frontisp., and inscribed and signed again by Wood to Leon Gelber, noting his appreciation and long friendship. First edition, No. 2 of 50 copies printed on handmade paper, signed and numbered, and inscribed. Published the same year as a new expanded edition of Poet in the Desert, the noted Portland author's (1852-1944) epic Jeremiad poem judging man's ills and civilization. This work consisted of twenty-two western cowboy poems recalling the conditions and life of the cowboy pushing cattle. Wood was an early settler in the Oregon country after fighting in the Nez Perce Indian Wars, and later a lawyer, author, editor, as well as a supporter of the Wobblies, an anarchist, and advocate of the Free Love movement. Gelber (1891-1947) a Romanian-American book salesman and antiquarian, joined with Theodore Max Lilienthal (1893-1972) in establishing the Gelber-Lilienthal Book Shop at 336 Sutter, with Gelber as president, who also founded the Lantern Press publishing Company which printed a number of their editions at the Grabhorn Press, including Hildegard Flanner, A Tree in Bloom (1924), Jake Zeitlin's Whispers and Chants (1927) with illustrations by Valenti Angelo, and many others. Magee, Grabhorn Press, 121; Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s, pp. 325-328; Bingham, Charles Erskine Scott Wood (1990), pp. 33-34; Julie Melby, The Gelber-Lilenthal Book Shop of San Francisco, Graphic Arts Exhibitions, Princeton University Library (2010).
Seller: Zephyr Used & Rare Books, Vancouver, WA, U.S.A.