First edition, presentation copy, of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet's first book — inscribed with an unpublished dedicatory poem and two autograph letters critically examining her own work.
Near fine.
Price: $2,000.00
"I am sending you 'Sonnets to Duse' tho' nobody knows better than I that it's painfully young and thin."
Teasdale's letters to Midwestern journalist Mary S. Wright lightly deprecate the youthful work of SONNETS TO DUSE (with the exception of "one or two of the songs and one or two of the sonnets"); her inscription likewise asks the reader to "Look with forgiving eyes / On these first songs of mine — / Nineteen is scarcely wise." Teasdale makes no such apologies for the accomplishments of more recent work, proudly mentioning the news of a second edition for RIVERS TO THE SEA and urging Wright to look into HELEN OF TROY, Teasdale's second collection and one she felt merited more attention. In her second letter, the poet comments on her representation of Death as a "gracious figure" in "In a Hospital," a series of lyric poems on closely observed themes of illness and pain, later published as part IV of FLAME AND SHADOW (1920). An excellent association copy from Teasdale's most productive period of composition, valuable with her own assessment of her early books and analytical insight into her own poetic intentions.
Read more: Drake, Sara Teasdale, Woman & Poet.
Boston: The Poet Lore Company, 1907. 7.5'' x 5.25''. Original brown paper boards with cream title labels. 44 pages. Inscribed by Teasdale on front free endpaper with an original poem titled "A Prayer to Mary S. Wright," dated February '16. Two autograph letters signed to Wright laid in, on heavy cardstock stationery from St. Louis's Usona Hotel, dated Feb. 25, '16 and Mar. 4, 1916 respectively. Light edgewear and bumping to boards, tiny bit of chipping to spine label, faint offsetting to endpapers.
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