[Rarebooks] fa: JOSEPH MONCURE MARCH - The Set-Up & The Wild Party • LIMITED EDS./SIGNED/ILLUSTRATED • 1928

[ArCh]

Listed now, auctions ending Sunday, January 28. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/y9l6mmhm

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Joseph Moncure March; Alexander King, illus.: THE SET-UP. New York: Covici, Friede, 1928. Tall 8vo (25 cm) in cloth-backed patterned boards; 184 pp.; illustrated in color. One of a limited edition of 275 copies numbered and signed by the author. Binding with bumping/wear to the corners and edges, modest rubbing and soiling to the spine; text block with toning to the untrimmed edges.

PRESENTATION COPY inscribed by March to John Riddell, the pen name of writer, humorist and fellow New Yorker contributor Corey Ford. The Set-Up is March’s epic-length narrative poem set in the boxing world and is richly peppered with punchy period color, characters and slang. It was the source for the 1949 film of the same name, a noir semi-classic, starring Robert Ryan. Loosely laid in is Riddell/Ford’s parody of the poem, “The Up-Set,” as it appeared in Vanity Fair magazine in March, 1929. In it, Riddell refashions the central boxing match as a bout between two poets, Joseph Moncure (“Kid”) March and Robert (“Farmer”) Frost. (March had been a protegé of Frost’s at Amherst College.)


Joseph Moncure March; Reginald Marsh, illus.: THE WILD PARTY. New York: Pascal Covici, 1928. First edition; limited edition “published for subscribers only,” one of 750 hand-numbered copies. Tall 8vo (24 cm) in original cloth-backed printed and patterned boards; 114 pp.; illustrated in black&white. Binding with some sunning to the spine and edges, wear to the corners; contents lightly toned, but clean and sound. With the “Ex-libris Rudolph Valentino” bookplate of Hollywood columnist Jimmy Starr (a close friend of Valentino’s, he was granted permission by the Valentino estate to incorporate Valentino’s bookplate into his own).

The true first edition of March’s epic-length narrative poem, iconic of the 1920s, depicting the sometimes madcap, sometimes brutal goings-on among a dissolute gaggle of Jazz Age types as they prepare for, then endure, the titular shindig. Shocking at the time of its publication (it was banned in Boston), it was also an immediate success, and in later years became something of a literary cult classic. William S. Burroughs was quoted (by Art Spiegelman) as saying that it was reading The Wild Party that made him want to become a writer.