[Rarebooks] FS: Theodore Roethke Inscribed to Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas

[Charles Agvent]

ROETHKE, Theodore. THE WAKING. POEMS: 1933 - 1953. Garden City: 
Doubleday & Co., 1953. First Edition. Roethke's Pulitzer Prize-winning 
collection of his best poems. This copy is INSCRIBED and SIGNED on the 
title page to Supreme Court Associate Justice Abe Fortas: "To Abe,/with 
more than/the usual good/wishes to a stranger/Ted Roethke." Fortas 
assisted Lyndon Johnson in winning his Senate seat and became a lifelong 
friend to Johnson who appointed Fortas to the Supreme Court in 1965. 
When Chief Justice Earl Warren announced his retirement in June 1968, 
Johnson nominated Associate Justice Fortas to replace Warren. Fortas was 
the first Chief Justice nominee ever to appear before the Senate, and he 
faced hostile questioning about his relationship with Lyndon Johnson 
ultimately leading Fortas to ask Johnson to withdraw his nomination. 
Fortas resigned from the court in 1969 after a financial scandal. With a 
blindstamp on the second front blank indicating the book is from the 
library of Abe Fortas and a blank check from Seattle's University 
National Bank laid in. On the verso of the check in an unknown hand is 
written: "Dear Abe/Read the book/backwards." In the same small hand next 
to the printed date on the title page is written "April 27, 1954." The 
dustwrapper has some rubbing and light edgewear with the remnant of 
about half of a Pulitzer Prize Winner sticker on the front panel. Fine 
in a Very Good dustwrapper. A superb Association Copy.     $3,500.00

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