Gems from Walt Whitman. Selected by Elizabeth Porter Gould.
Item #74186
WHITMAN, Walt. Gems from Walt Whitman. Selected by Elizabeth Porter Gould. Original cloth, A.e.g. Phila.: David McKay, 1889. First edition. BAL 21637. Presentation inscription from the editor on the front free endpaper, "For Cordelia-With pleasant memories of the `Home Club,' and best wishes. Lovingly, Elizabeth Porter Gould. October 29, 1891." There are a few marginal notations in Gould's hand in the volume. Laid in is an autograph manuscript signed of Gould's poem "To the Members of my Home-Club," dated 26 May 1888, inscribed on the verso, "With pleasant memories and Kindest wishes." The poem was collected in Gould's volume Stray Pebbles from the Shores of Thought (1892). It is accompanied by an autograph letter signed from Gould to Mrs. Hinckley, dated 23 January 1894, sending the poem: "I also send a Stray Pebble gathered in the western shore. Should you own my little book you may like to put it in it. There is also an offprint of Gould's poem "On a Mule on the Nevada Trail in the Yosemite Valley, 1893" and a news clipping about Gould's funeral. Whitman permitted only two editions of his works selected by others in his lifetime: this work and William Michael Rossetti's Poems by Walt Whitman (1868). He regretted both of them, telling Horace Traubel: "I never gave my assent to any abbreviated editions which I didn't live to regret. These gems, extracts, specimens, tid-bits, brilliants, sparkles, chippings are all wearisome . they might go with some books: yes, they fit with some books-some books fit with them: but Leaves of Grass is different." He later complained to Traubel that he should not have allowed his publisher, David McKay, to talk him into the book and that he and Traubel should have done a similar work instead. Despite these hesitations, Whitman was equally anxious that the book would sell. Whitman wrote to William D. O'Connor that Gould was "[one] of my most determined friends & understanders," and described her to William Sloane Kennedy as "a noble woman." To Traubel, however, he said: "She bristles with conventions. . . . in spite of the best opposite impulses [conventionality] will cling to some people-cling with an ineradicable clinginess." Gems from Walt Whitman was created by Gould as a woman's book, and it was mark.
Price: $7,500.00