Description
VERY RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION FIRST EDITION
OF SHERWOOD ANDERSON’S WINESBURG, OHIO, INSCRIBED BY HIM
TO HIS CLOSE FRIEND, WRITER AND TRANSLATOR LEWIS GALANTIÊRE
ANDERSON, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1919. Octavo, original yellow cloth, printed paper spine label, cartographic front pastedown, original dust jacket.
Rare first edition, first issue of “Anderson’s first important work, and possibly his finest” (Sheehy & Lohf), an exceptional presentation/association copy inscribed to Lewis Galantiêre, who became close friends with Anderson in Chicago and in 1920s Paris was a “one-man receiving committee for American writers”—chief among them Anderson and Hemingway, as well as Joyce and Sylvia Beach. Anderson’s warm inscription reads: “Louis [sic] Galantiere, One of the fellows for whom books like this are written, Sherwood Anderson,” in rarely found dust jacket.
Although he had already published two novels and a book of poetry, Anderson did not receive widespread attention until he produced this book, “establishing him as a leading figure in the Chicago literary renaissance” (Stringer, 20). “These stories of small-town people voice the philosophy of life expressed in all his later works. Adopting a naturalistic interpretation of American life, he believed that the primal forces of human behavior are instinctive and not to be denied, as he supposed they are, by the standardization of a machine age” (Hart, 31). Approaching his characters in these stories, Anderson aims to peel away “other people’s attitudes to reveal the complexity and potential of the man beneath” (Parker & Kermode, 79). The book was a major influence on Hemingway, Faulkner and Wolfe, and led critic Carl Van Doren to note, “Anderson, who is a poet at heart, is profoundly devoted to the idea that life to be truly good must be mobile and creative, not fixed and obedient.” First issue, with unbroken right frame line of title page; “lay” at page 86, line five; broken type in “the” at page 251, line three. Sheehy & Lohf 9. Bruccoli & Clark II:14. Dickinson, 14. Recipient Lewis Galantiêre, born in Los Angeles, was at the center of the expatriate literary world of 1920s Paris. Galantiêre spent his “early days in Chicago with Sherwood Anderson, Ben Hecht, Carl Sandburg? He was a writer’s writer and a critic’s critic, as well as one of the finest French translators of our time? By the time Anderson and his wife Tennessee arrived in Paris in the spring of 1921, Galantiêre was already installed there? After Anderson’s visit Galantiêre became a kind of one-man receiving committee for American writers,” forming important friendships with Hemingway, as well as James Joyce and Sylvia Beach (Aethea, Lewis Galantiêre, Columbia Library Columns, 41:2, 3-11). Galantiêre returned to America in 1928, where he collaborated on theatrical works with famed producer John Houseman. Among his best known works as a translator are works by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Jean Anouilh.
Text generally fresh, mild rubbing to paper spine label affecting publisher’s name, light soiling, edge-wear to near-fine book; some chipping, slight soiling to rare extremely good dust jacket. An exceptional presentation copy with an especially important association.
