ANGELS AND EARTHLY CREATURES A SEQUENCE OF SONNETS.

Wylie, Elinor:

Price: 3500.00 USD

Henley-on-Thames: The Borough Press, 1928, Printed stiff boards, in decorated wrapper. Minor offsetting from the wrappers to the prelims, otherwise fine in lightly worn decorative paper wrapper (which has a one inch tear at the top of the spine fold). First edition. One of a total edition of fifty-one copies for private distribution. This is copy #10, and is both signed by Wylie, and inscribed by her: "For Thornton with love from Elinor Christmas 1928." The recipient was, of course, Thornton Wilder, close friend of Wylie and Benet. Wylie intended to sign and number all fifty-one copies, but she died of a stroke on 16 December, while on a Christmas visit to New York, before more than a few copies were signed and numbered. BAL describes one of the copies at Yale inscribed by Wylie to her husband (there is another such inscribed 'family' copy at Yale as well), and we know of two other inscribed copies (#16, inscribed to the Colums, and #23, inscribed to Stephen Tennant). We have handled at least four unsigned, unnumbered copies, and the Goodwin copy (I:291) appears not to have been signed as well. The OCLC has thirteen locations (including Yale), and presumably more than a few of these are unsigned and unnumbered, including two there recorded which correspond to unsigned copies we sold. The text of these nineteen sonnets varies from that printed in the larger collection issued under the cover title the following year. Next to INCIDENTAL NUMBERS, the author's least common book, and when signed and numbered, a marketplace rarity to conjure with among the cognoscenti. Signed and Inscribed BAL 23520.