A Time To Be Born
by Dawn Powell
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good
- Seller
-
Saint Charles, Illinois, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Powell's first editions, both US and UK editions, are relatively uncommon. This copy of the UK first is very good in gray cloth with black titles on the spine. Slight soiling on the covers and slight bumping at the corners. There are two ink inscriptions from a previous owner on the front pastedown. Page edges are age darkened, but no other marks or damage. No DJ.. TN.
Synopsis
Late in life, out of luck and fashion, Henry James predicted a day when all of his neglected novels would kick off their headstones, one after another. As the twentieth century came to an end, the works of Dawn Powell managed the same magnificent task. When Powell died in 1965, virtually all her books were out of print. Not a single historical survey of American literature mentioned her, even in passing. And so she slept, seemingly destined to be forgotten – or, to put it more exactly, never to be remembered. How things have changed! Numerous Powell’s novels have now been reissued by Steerforth Press along with editions of her plays, diaries and short stories. She has joined the Library of America, admitted to the illustrious company of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Adams, Frederick Douglass, and Edith Wharton. For the contemporary poet and novelist Lisa Zeidner, writing in The New York Times Book Review , Powell “is wittier than Dorothy Parker, dissects the rich better than F. Scott Fitzgerald, is more plaintive than Willa Cather in her evocation of the heartland, and has a more supple control of satirical voice than Evelyn Waugh.” For his part, Gore Vidal offered a simple reason for Powell’s sudden popularity: “We are catching up to her.” Tim Page, Powell’ s biographer, from his foreword to My Home Is Far Away : Dawn Powell was born in Mt. Gilead, Ohio, on November 28, 1896, the second of three daughters. Her father was a traveling salesman, and her mother died a few days after Dawn turned seven. After enduring great cruelty at the hands of her stepmother, Dawn ran away at the age of thirteen and eventually arrived at the home of her maternal aunt, who served hot meals to travelers emerging from the train station across the street. Dawn worked her way through college and made it to New York. There she married a young advertising executive and had one child, a boy who suffered from autism, then an unknown condition. Powell referred to herself as a “permanent visitor” in her adopted Manhattan and brought to her writing a perspective gained from her upbringing in Middle America. She knew many of the great writers of her time, and Diana Trilling famously said it was Dawn “who really says the funny things for which Dorothy Parker gets credit.” Ernest Hemingway called her his “favorite living writer.” She was one of America’ s great novelists, and yet when she died in 1965 she was buried in an unmarked grave in New York’s Potter’s Field.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Stanley Louis Remarkable Books (IOBA) (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- B357
- Title
- A Time To Be Born
- Author
- Dawn Powell
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First UK
- Publisher
- Constable
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1943
- Bookseller catalogs
- Literature;
Terms of Sale
Stanley Louis Remarkable Books (IOBA)
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days.
About the Seller
Stanley Louis Remarkable Books (IOBA)
About Stanley Louis Remarkable Books (IOBA)
Glossary
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- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...