Whitman, Walt | Presentation copy, signed twice

Whitman, Walt

Two Rivulets, Including Democratic Vistas, Centennial Songs and Passage to India. Camden: Author's Edition, 1876. [With:] Postcard from H.R. Haweis sent to Whitman

8vo (197 x 118 mm). Signed "Walt Whitman born May 31, 1819" on mounted frontispiece photograph of Whitman by G. F. E. Pearsall, and inscribed on the front free endpaper, 4 section-titles; front free endpaper and portrait page loose and with glue residue at inner margin, some mild toning overall. In cream half morocco binding over marbled boards, brown morocco label lettered in gilt, yellow endpapers, signed by the author on front free endpaper; front hinge cracked, worn at extremities and spine, with exposure to corners. [With:] Postcard (approx. 85 x 120 mm). Written verso and recto; card toned, right corner chipped, chip included.

Presentation copy, signed twice. In addition to the signed frontispiece photograph, Whitman inscribed "H.R. Haweis from the author" on the flyleaf before mailing it to Haweis. Along with the Author's Edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman had between 600 and 650 copies of this work printed for the American Centenniel. He signed the photographic frontispiece as he sold them from his home in Camden. The postcard was sent by H.R. Haweis from London, requesting Whitman to "Please also send two vols: (Leaves [...] and Two Rivulets)".

The present copy was later owned by the artist, poet, and writer José García Villa. Villa was born in Manila in 1908, before moving to New Mexico to pursue his studies, and ultimately to Greenwich Village in New York City. There, he joined a community of modernist poets, including e.e. cummings, Marianne Moore, and W.H. Auden, among others, and was affectionately known as "The Pope of Greenwich Village." He wrote his poems under the pseudonym Doveglion (a composite of dove, eagle, and lion) and was admired, according to Marianne Moore, for "the reverence, the raptness, the depth of concentration in [his] bravely deep poems." His 1933 story collection, Footnote to Youth: Tales of the Philippines and Others, was "the first work of fiction by a Filipino writer published by a major United States-based press."

REFERENCE:

Academy of American Poets, "José García Villa"; BAL 21413; Feinberg 297; Villa, Doveglion: Collected Poems, ed. John Edwin Cowen; Wells & Goldsmith pp. 20-22

PROVENANCE:

H.R. Haweis (presentation inscription) — José García Villa, thence by descent