First separate and first complete edition of Stein's poem, partially a portrait of art critic Henry McBride, originally printed in Vanity Fair with 35 lines omitted — one of just 200 copies.
Very good.
Price: $1,000.00
"It is wonderful the way I am not interested."
Said to be a "portrait" of McBride, through whose influence the poem was first published in VANITY FAIR, the pamphlet's title-page footnote corrects that misapprehension: "It is in fact a genre picture and Mr. McBride is but one of the personages." Furthermore, "The 'political' quality of Miss Stein's caricature will not be misapprehended by students of her work." Or else. In THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS, Stein later wrote: "It was Henry McBride who used to keep Gertrude Stein's name before the public all those tormented years. Laugh if you like, he used to say to her detractors, but laugh with and not at her, in that way you will enjoy it all the better." As a writer for THE SUN and THE DIAL, McBride was an important and influential supporter of Picasso, Matisse, and other modernists, thanks in part to Stein's own strong influence.
Read more: Wilson, Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography, A4; Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
First printing. [West Chester, PA]: [Printed by Horace F. Temple], 1917. 8'' x 7''. Original sewn dark red wrappers. Black and white frontispiece caricature of Henry McBride by Jules Pascin. Edition of 200 copies, of which this is no. 159. 14 pages. Bookplate of Clifton Waller Barrett mounted to front cover verso. Light soil and wear to wrappers, small split to lower spine, edges sunned and lightly chipped.
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