[Rarebooks] FS: Two Highlights of 20th C. Literature

[Clare Murphy]

Photos available upon request.

1.  CATHER, WILLA. S.  O PIONEERS ! SIGNED COPY. Boston: Houghton 
Mifflin Company, 1913. Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood. First 
issue of first edition. Yellowish tan cloth. Signed by Willa Cather 
in initials on first free end paper. Also her address, "Red Cloud, 
Nebraska. June 1913". 308 pgs Very good/Lacks jacket. Dedicated to 
the memory of Sarah Orne Jewett, Cather's friend and mentor. All 
issue points present. "Chince-bugs" on page 60. Period touching the O 
at bottom of spine. Light wear to edges. Indentation in spine cloth. 
Contents clean and free from foxing. Willa Cather (1873-1947) was 
born December 7, 1873, in Black Creek Valley (Gore) Virginia, where 
she remained until the age of nine when she moved with her family to 
Webster County, Nebraska. Having passed her earliest years amid a 
settled landscape and established traditions, Cather compared coming 
to Nebraska to being "thrown onto a land as bare as a piece of sheet 
iron" (1913; Willa Cather in Person, ed. L. Brent Bohlke, 10). She 
later reflected that two experiences of that move shaped her within: 
being gripped with a passion for that "shaggy grass country" that was 
"the happiness and the curse of my life" (1921: WCIP, 32), and 
visiting immigrant neighbors, particularly the old women who told her 
stories of the home country. After eighteen months on a ranch, her 
family moved into Red Cloud, a "scrappy western town" rich with 
possibility for a child with an eager mind (see "Old Mrs. Harris"). 
Cather remained there until in 1890, she entered the University of 
Nebraska as a second year preparatory student. Her earliest published 
fiction dates from this time, offering grim stories of immigrant 
loneliness in a new country; as important, while a student she began 
her journalistic career, working as a drama critic for the Lincoln 
Journal.Following her graduation in 1895, Cather moved to 
Pittsburgh, where she worked in journalism, taught high school, took 
the first of many trips to Europe, and in 1905 published "The Troll 
Garden," her earliest collection of short stories. In 1906 she 
moved to New York, to work as editor, then managing editor of 
"McClure's Magazine." While on assignment for "McClure's," Cather met 
Sarah Orne Jewett, who understood her aspirations in art and 
encouraged her to withdraw from journalism and "to find your own 
quiet center of life, and write from that to the world" (1908). 
Cather's first novels (there were two, she said), followed: the 
Jamesian "Alexander's Bridge" -- and then "O Pioneers!". In a copy 
for a friend, Cather wrote of "O Pioneers!", "This was the first time 
I walked off on my own feet -- everything before was half real and 
half an imitation of writers whom I admired. In this one I hit the 
home pasture.  $1300.00

2.  GREENE, GRAHAM.  THE POWER AND THE GLORY. Heinemann, 1940. First 
issue of first edition. Original green cloth. Very good/Very good. 
Previous owner's bookplate to front pastedown. "First published 1940" 
on copyright page. Dust jacket states "Second issue" and is 
unclipped.  $1400.00

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Clare Murphy
Payson Hall Books
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payson at oldbooks.com

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