FIRSTBORN (REVIEW COPY, SIGNED)
New York: New American Library, 1968. Stated First Printing. Hardcover. First book of poems by this major American poet, published when she was twenty-four years old. SIGNED review copy with publisher's slip laid in. Grey, cloth-covered boards, with navy-blue lettering to spine. Very light rubbing to extremities, two ever-so-slightly nudged corners.
Two coffee stains, 1 1/2 in. x 5 in. each, to both bottom and top of rear board, and a wee bit to very top of spine. The spill was first "caught" by the rear panel of the dustjacket which shows a large darkened stain to the top and very bottom of the dustjacket's rear panel photo, and extends to the very bottom and top of the dustjacket spine. Jacket is otherwise intact, unclipped, with original $4.00 price to top of front flap.
Glück won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris and the National Book Award in 2014. Her other honours include the 2001 Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award, given in 2008, a National Humanities Medal, awarded in 2015, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020.
SIGNED by the poet, on title page. Very Good in Very Good Dustjacket. Item #85180
The poet writes: "FIRSTBORN, begun when I was eighteen and finished when I was twenty-three, was rejected twenty-eight times and finally accepted by New American Library, which intended to make it the first book in its new poetry series. The series never happened. But I did see stacks of my books in New York bookstores for a while, looking oddly fraudulent amid the legitimate books..."
Price: $2,000.00