About this Item
88p octavo, In good condition at best in the publisher's thin textured boards (BAL's binding A), with the front board and first two leaves all but detached (held by a single thin thread). Else clean, with mild dust-soiling to edges, lacking the scarce dust jacket. Tipped onto the first leaf is an autograph letter of ten lines, SIGNED by James Whitcomb Riley. The letter reads, in full: "Personal. Nov. 9, 1894. Miss Clara E. Laughlin, Literary Editor, The Interior: If the inclosed [sic] homely Stave for Christmas should at all answer the desire you so kindly express, I will be glad indeed that the best I can do [emphasized] is acceptable. In any event write me at once in reply - sending either poem or proof-slip. Very truly yours, J. W. Riley." The letter is in fine condition, with old mailing folds. Housed in a red cloth chemise and red morocco-backed slipcase. Eugene Field's copy, with his small bookplate to the inside of the front board, and with two statements in ink on rear blanks in the hand of Field's notorious son, Eugene Field II, indicating that the book came from his father's library. Good-. Hardcover. Laughlin was an accomplished editor, writer, and radio personality. in 1916, two decades after this letter was written, she wrote the "Reminiscenes of James Whitcomb Riley," which recounts her relationship with the Indiana poet. Though the narrative is rather short on precise details, it opens with her account of their first meeting, which took place over correspondence. To summarize, she identifies herself as, at the time, a "ridiculously young editor" of a "Chicago weekly." She requested of Riley twenty-five dollars worth of "his very best poetry," which she graciously received in time for "Christmas, when [she] proudlly presented [her] readers with a Riley poem filling an entire page." (See "Reminiscences" pp. 7-9). Though her narrative is, again, short on details (name of the paper, date and year of her request), there are enough similarities to Riley's letter ("the best I can do," Christmas theme, the terse but friendly tone, suggesting that they were not yet well-aquainted) that we presume his note to her may have been the very response to her request that she had been hoping for, and the beginning of their relationship. Though a rather regrettable copy of the book itself, it is nevertheless Field's copy, and handsomely presented in a box almost certainly commissioned by him, and with a wonderful letter which commemorates an important relationship. BAL 16587Â.
Seller Inventory # 53642
Contact seller
Report this item
