BERRYMAN, John.
Homage to Mistress Bradstreet.
New York: Farrar Straus & Cudahy , 1956.
$1,250.00
Out of Stock
Item Number: RRB-124552
+$450
First edition of John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet; warmly inscribed by him
First edition of "the most distinguished long poem by an American since T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land" (Edmund Wilson). Octavo, original illustrated boards, illustrated by Ben Shahn. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Merle & Jules Proctor with the best wishes of John Berryman Mpls 26 Jan 1957." With a business card from Berryman's wife Jill laid in, inscribed by her, "If you would like to write John, his address is 1929 Third Street Minneapolis, Minn." Fine in a fine dust jacket.
Berryman's first major work, Homage to Mistress Bradstreet first appeared in Partisan Review in 1953 and was later published by Farrar Straus & Cudahy in 1956. The first of Berryman's poems to receive national critical acclaim, in it he addresses the 17th-century American poet Anne Bradstreet, combining her life history with his fantasies about her. Joel Athey noted, "This difficult poem, a tribute to the Puritan poet of colonial America, took Berryman five years to complete and demanded much from the reader when it first appeared with no notes. The Times Literary Supplement hailed it as a path-breaking masterpiece; poet Robert Fitzgerald called it 'the poem of his generation.'" Edmund Wilson wrote that it was "the most distinguished long poem by an American since T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land."
Homage to Mistress Bradstreet.
$1,250.00
Out of Stock
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