The Sunken Garden
New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1926. From the Bart Auerbach Collection. 8vo. Original black cloth. Covers slightly and evenly foxed, spine faded, a good copy. Item #409157
First edition of the author's third book and first prose work (a novel). The dedication copy, inscribed by this twelve-year-old author: "For Jean Starr Untermeyer, most sweet friend and gracious lady, to whom I have dedicated The Sunken Garden. With love, Nathalia Crane. Brooklyn, N. Y., May 7, 1926." Opposite the inscription, on the inside front cover, Crane (one assumes) has affixed a charming portrait of herself by Bachrach. Jean Starr Untermeyer was a well-known poet in her own right; by 1926 she was divorced from Louis Untermeyer.
Crane (1913-1998) "was a poet and novelist who became famous as a child prodigy after the publication of her first book of poetry, 'The Janitor's Boy', written at age ten and published two years later... Crane was dubbed 'Then Brooklyn Bard' by the time she was thirteen and became part of the Louis Untermeyer poetry circle in her late teens... [she] later became a professor of English at San Diego State University" (Wikipedia entry). (BA).
Price: $1,250.00