[Rarebooks] FS: John Reed's First Book INSCRIBED to Louise Bryant

[Charles Agvent]

One of several spectacular John Reed items fromour new catalog--SUMMER 
MISCELLANY 2014--which contains 127 select items, all new arrivals, in a 
variety of fields. Here is a link to our illustrated pdf catalog on our 
website:
http://www.charlesagvent.com/shop/agvent/index.html?id=DLrIinxi&mv_pc=440

REED, John. SANGAR. TO LINCOLN STEFFENS (Inscribed to Louise Bryant). 
Riverside, CT: Hillacre, 1913. First Edition. Small quarto (6-1/2" x 
9-3/4"); dark brown paper boards stamped in gilt on front and spine. 
Illustrated with a frontispiece photograph of Lincoln Steffens with 
tissue guard. One of only 500 copies of Reed's first book, a poem 
subtitled "The mad recreant knight of the west." This copy is INSCRIBED 
and SIGNED by Reed on the front endpaper: "To Louise/with 
everything/John Reed." Perhaps the best known left-wing American 
journalist of the twentieth century; Reed was portrayed by Warren Beatty 
in the film REDS, nominated for twelve Academy Awards and winner of 
three, which centered on Reed's life, notably his romance with Louise 
Bryant, played by Diane Keaton, and his early death at 33 in Moscow. 
Reed's best known book, TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, is Reed's 
firsthand account of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. Boards 
slightly bowed; about an inch of the spine neatly and professionally 
repaired at the top, slight wear at the heel. Near Fine, lacking the 
publisher's cardboard slipcase.

Steffens's complex and, ultimately, doomed effort to mediate in the 
infamous 1911 McNamara trial in Los Angeles inspired Reed's composition 
of this "Christian allegory." The McNamara brothers, John and James, 
leaders of the radical international association of bridge and 
structural iron workers union, were indicted for the 1910 dynamiting of 
the LOS ANGELES TIMES building which killed twenty people. Initially 
supporters of the McNamaras protested that the charges against the 
brothers were trumped up and that the deadly explosion was attributable 
to faulty maintenance by management. But as the trial dragged on even 
the brothers' own lawyer, Clarence Darrow, grew convinced of their 
guilt. It was at this point that Steffens interceded (at whose request 
remains unclear to this day), confident that some permutation of the 
"golden rule" could be applied to resolve the case to the satisfaction 
of both sides and that the residual benefit of such a "Christianly" 
settlement would be a dialogue between capital and labor. But Steffens's 
meddling apparently infuriated Judge Bordwell, who tossed the book at 
the McNamaras even after they'd altered their pleas to guilty expecting 
to be shown leniency. Both brothers received lengthy prison terms. 
Steffens was blasted from all sides. Capital -- led by Harrison Gray 
Otis, proprietor of the TIMES, and Theodore Roosevelt -- thumbed their 
noses at him, as did labor, cheerleaded by Emma Goldman and Max Eastman, 
who charged Steffens with sanctimonious naiveté for collaborating with 
the anti-McNamara forces. Reed's position was more ambiguous and he 
composed SANGAR ostensibly in praise of his mentor's work in Los 
Angeles. Reed went so far as to read SANGAR aloud to Steffens in a 
Greenwich Village restaurant prior to sending it off to POETRY magazine, 
where Harriet Monroe not only published it but gave it an award. But 
twenty years later when he wrote his autobiography, and Reed was many 
years dead, Steffens took no pride in the dedication. "John Reed, my own 
boy," he noted, "wrote a fierce poem, 'Sangar,' denouncing me." 
(#017502)        $7,500.00

http://www.charlesagvent.com/shop/agvent/017502.html?id=s3Jpp5cE

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