Cawdor and Other Poems
New York: Horace Liveright, 1928.
First trade edition, first printing, following the limited edition by four days. Association copy signed by Robinson Jeffers on the front free endpaper and inscribed to his friends Charles Erskine Scott Wood and Sara Bard Field with date November 1928. 160 pp. Bound in publisher's purple-gray paper-covered boards over black spine cloth, stamped in gilt, black topstain. Near Fine with light rubbing to spine and small bumps to lower corners. Light offsetting from jacket to endpapers, overopened at p. 81. In a Near Fine unclipped dust jacket with toning and light wear to extremities, penciled prices to front flap, and very light soiling to exposed panels. One inch chip to tail of spine repaired with mending tissue on verso. Alberts 55.
A lovely signed copy from the library of Michael Broomfield, Jeffers' bibliographer. Robinson Jeffers, the "poet of the California outdoors" and a notorious recluse, fell in love with his wife Una while she was still married to another man. The couple moved to Carmel to escape the scandal. There they built the stone house and tower known as "Tor House," where Jeffers inscribed this book for his friends.
The writers Charles Erskine Scott Wood and Sara Bard Field lived on a much grander estate in Los Gatos, some fifty miles from Carmel. They were an extraordinary couple: Wood was an Indian Wars veteran and anarchist attorney, while Field was a free love advocate and prominent suffragist who worked with Alice Paul. She was one of the women chosen to present a petition for a federal suffrage amendment to President Woodrow Wilson. Sara Bard Field, noted one reporter the year this book was published, was "especially chosen for those occasions when women wished to make an impression of dignity, force and grace."
Price: $2,000