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

[Charles Agvent]

ROETHKE, Theodore. THE WAKING. POEMS: 1933 - 1953. Garden City: 
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 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." Fine in a Very Good dustwrapper with some rubbing and light 
edgewear with the remnant of about half of a Pulitzer Prize Winner 
sticker on the front panel. A superb Association Copy. (#014653)        
$3,500.00

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