The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne & The Complete Poetry of William Blake

Introduction by Robert Silliman Hillyer. Green cloth with gilt spine lettering. lv, 1045pp. Plain endpapers. Very good. Internally tight and fine, with faintest of binding wear only. A tight, quite nice later printing of #70 of the Modern Library Giant edition, first published in 1941 -- here undated but based on binding details 1960s. This copy exceptional in two ways: 1) It hails from the collection of Adlai E. Stevenson III (1930-2021), U.S. Senator from Illinois, and before him of his father, Adlai E. Stevenson II (1900-65), Illinois governor and twice Democratic presidential candidate, and 2) tipped to front flyleaf is a superb Autograph Letter Signed from editor Hillyer (1895-1961), a poet and academic whose "Collected Verse of Robert Hillyer" won a Pulitzer Prize in 1934. 1p (lettersheet), 5¼" X 6 3/4", Pomfret, CT, 18 June 1941. Addressed to Arnold F. Gates (1914-93, noted Lincoln/Civil War scholar). Fine. On personal letterhead, Hillyer thanks this admirer for birthday wishes, adding: "My opus of the year has been an Introduction to the Modern Library edition of Donne and Blake, which I hope you will see in print in a month or two. Boldly penned in black ink and signed in full at the close. A truly outstanding copy. The Toledano reference work, by the way, is mistaken in citing 1946 as the first year of publication. …