Fire and Other Poems

Grabhorn Press, San Francisco, 1930. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. First edition thus, with a foreword by Robinson Jeffers and a note on the poems by Frieda Lawrence. One of 300 copies printed on handmade uncut paper. The first appearance of all but two of these poems. The book has the tipped-in, unobtrusive bookplate of collector Irving W. Robbins, Jr., honorary curator of rare books at Stanford University. And it has more: Not only is this copy signed by Robert and Edwin Grabhorn on the first blank, it is also handsomely inscribed by Robinson Jeffers after his foreword: "For Frank Shuabacher, Jr., Sincerely Robinson Jeffers, Tor House, Carmel, September 26, 1940." Which makes it in all likelihood a unique copy; doubtful if many or any of the other 299 copies reached Jeffers hands for a signature. Lawrence and Jeffers were good friends, visited each other, and, to a great extent, shared a worldview that reached out to and accepted the natural world though Jeffers took it further with his declared inhumanism. Writes Del Ivan Janik in Environmental Review, "Lawrence s post-humanism looks at the human species as part of a larger living whole, valuing that whole in its complexity and integrity. Post-humanism values all living things and the inorganic environment on which they depend, recognizing that all life and the conditions that sustain life are interrelate." Jeffers in his foreword presents a complicated, ultimately clear-eyed view of his friend and his talents: "When it is not poetry nor good prose it is at least perceptive, or grotesquely imaginative, or carries voices from the queer dark black-world of myth and magic that he took everywhere with him." Printed for the Book Club of California in the year of D.H. Lawrence s death. Full linen boards, with a gilt spine label. The typical tanning to endsheets, otherwise fine, except for a little wear to both upper corners.