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First edition, one of 1,000 copies. Second issue jacket with corrected reading "conjunctions" on the inner front flap. 82, [1] pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Signed by Stevens on the half title in 1947, and signed twice by Wilbert Snow (1884 1977), educator and Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Connecticut from 1945-47. In an article on Stevens' elusive presence in Hartford, Steve Kemper notes that the insurance vice-president and poet didn't "mingle with the sociable Poetry Club of Hartford, which met regularly at a bookstore on Lewis Street and included such regional eminences as Odell Shepard, Wilbert Snow, and Robert Hillyer. One of the bookstore's employees told Peter Brazeau that though the store tried to push Stevens's poetry, it sold only three copies of the 1931 reissue of Harmonium: 'You wouldn't find one in a thousand [among Hartfordites interested in the arts] who knew him by name, who he was.'" ("Looking for Wallace Stevens," Hartford Courant, March 24, 1996). Snow was a man of letters, and received his masters from Columbia University, where he introduced his young student Carl Van Doren to the then-obscure Herman Melville. It was Van Doren who introduced Raymond Weaver, the biographer, to Melville, and published The American Novel in 1921, both acts which moved Melville to the center of any discussion of the 19th-Century in American letters. An interesting association bridging generations of American literature. In addition to the celebrated title poem, this collection includes an extensively revised and shortened version of "Owl's Clover," first published separately by the Alcestis Press the previous year. Edelstein A4.a Publisher's yellow cloth slightly toned, with a few marginal ink or pencil markings. Dust jacket unclipped (priced "$2.00 net"), spine sunned; some wear along folds; minor soiling and staining to front and rear panels; minor edgewear with a few small chips First edition, one of 1,000 copies. Second issue jacket with corrected reading "conjunctions" on the inner front flap.
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