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Lot 50

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Estimate
$2,000 - 3,000
Price Realized
$4,480
Sold prices are inclusive of Buyer’s Premium

Lot Description

[HEMINGWAY, Ernest (1899-1961)]. TAGGARD, Genevieve (1894-1948). The Life and Mind of Emily Dickinson. New York and London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.


8vo. Original grey cloth stamped in purple, several leaves unopened (extremities toned, some spotting to upper cover). Provenance: Bennett Schneider Book Seller, Kansas City (ticket at rear); Ruth White Lowry (1884-1974), Hemingway's cousin and Kansas City native (recipient of Hemingway's inscription).

Second printing. INSCRIBED BY HEMINGWAY TO HIS COUSIN, RUTH LOWRY: "Dear Ruth: The girl who wrote this was very lovely looking and a pretty good poet—was married to one of the most horrid citizens I have ever known, now divorced. Think one has a Guggenheim fellowship—what a mine of information the fellow is,—Ernest."

The "horrid citizen" Hemingway refers to is author Robert L. Wolf (1895–1970), whom poet Genevieve Taggard divorced in 1934. Wolf was part of Hemingway’s social circle in Paris in 1926 and was known for his polyamorous lifestyle and struggles with paranoid schizophrenia—likely the traits Hemingway alludes to in this inscription.

Hemingway was known to have frequented Bennett Schneider's bookshop in Kansas City, where he likely acquired this book for his cousin, with whom he was staying at the time.

Property from a Private St. Louis Collection

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