Books and Manuscripts

Eliot, T.S.
The Waste Land
New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922. First edition, mixed state (with 5 mm tall ink stamp on colophon, but with "mountain" spelled without "a" in line 339 on p. 41), #110/1,000 numbered copies. Publisher's first state flexible black cloth, stamped in gilt, spine faded, spine ends worn, soiling and spotting to boards; all edges untrimmed; short closed tear in upper gutter of half-title; contemporary bookseller's ticket of the New York City modernist bookshop, The Sunwise Turn Inc., on rear paste-down; rare dust-jacket and glassine wanting. Gallup A6a

A lovely copy of Eliot's acclaimed modernist work, from an influential early 20th century modernist bookshop. The Sunwise Turn, Inc. was a New York City-based bookshop, founded by Madge Jenison and Mary Mowbray-Clarke, in 1916. One of the first woman-owned and operated bookstores in America, the shop specialized in literary modernism and helped introduce the genre to American audiences. The shop was a favorite of some of America's most significant 20th century writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O'Neill, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Wallace Stevens, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and others. When Harold Loeb was brought in as a partner in 1919, he hired his young cousin Peggy Guggenheim, who helped in the shop's day-to-day operations. She later credited her time there as helping ignite her passion for collecting. In 1927, Mowbray-Clarke sold the store and its contents to Doubleday, Page & Co.

Provenance
The Estate of G. Franklin Ludington, New York City.