[Rarebooks] Poet George Sterling Typescript

[Garry R Austin]

For your consideration;
Postpaid, trade discounts apply

George Sterling. Typescript of the poem "The Chariots of Dawn". No  
date.  One page, Fifteen lines comprising title and two stanzas.  
Signed lower right. The piece measures approx. 8 1/2" x 11". It had  
been folded for mailing, folds have been smoothed. Very good.  $450.00

George Sterling (1 December 1869 – 17 November 1926) was an American  
poet based in California who, during his time, was celebrated as one  
of the greatest American poets, although he never gained much fame in  
the rest of the country.
Sterling was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York. A poet who  
called his works "pomes", Sterling became a significant figure in  
Bohemian literary circles in northern California in the first quarter  
of the 20th century, and in the development of the artists' colony in  
Carmel, he was mentored by a much older Ambrose Bierce, and became  
close friends with Jack London, and Clark Ashton Smith, and later  
mentor to Robinson Jeffers. His association with Charles Rollo Peters  
may have led to his move to Carmel. The hamlet had been discovered by  
Charles Warren Stoddard and others, but Sterling made the place world  
famous.  Kevin Starr (1973) wrote: "The uncrowned King of Bohemia (so  
his friends called him), Sterling had been at the center of every  
artistic circle in the Bay Area. Celebrated as the embodiment of the  
local artistic scene, though forgotten today, Sterling had in his  
lifetime been linked with the immortals, his name carved on the walls  
of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition next to the great poets  
of the past." Joseph Noel (1940) says that Sterling's poem, A Wine of  
Wizardry, has "been classed by many authorities as the greatest poem  
ever written by an American author."
According to Noel, Sterling sent the final draft of A Wine of Wizardry  
to the normally acerbic and critical Ambrose Bierce. Bierce said "If I  
could find a flaw in it, I should quickly call your attention to it...  
It takes the breath away."
In November 1926, Sterling committed suicide by swallowing cyanide at  
his residence at the San Francisco Bohemian Club. Kevin Starr wrote  
that "When George Sterling's corpse was discovered in his room at the  
Bohemian Club... the golden age of San Francisco's bohemia had  
definitely come to a miserable end." Sterling's most famous line was  
delivered to the city of San Francisco, "the cool grey city of love!"

Garry R Austin
mail at austinsbooks.com
Austin's Antiquarian Books
PO Box 730
Wilmington, VT 05363
802 464-8438