Howells, William Dean [Howells, W. D.]

The Mother and the Father [In the Rare Dust Jacket]

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1909. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. A Fine copy of the first edition, first printing of this long Poem by William Dean Howells bound in the Publisher's original green cloth with the front board lettered in gilt and decorated in blind and the spine lettered in gilt, with sharp corners showing only a touch of rubbing and with the closed page block's top edge in gilt. The hard-to-find price-clipped yellow dust jacket shows some tiny chips and tears to the edges and some general soiling. The Volume contains a tissue-guarded frontispiece and three additional illustrations. Of this work, the American Review of Reviews stated: "William Dean Howells... has given us an exquisite poem which, while neither rhyme nor strictly blank verse, is of the real Victorian flavor. It is entitled "The Mother and the Father", and it gives in simple, direct, delicately intuitive sentences a description of the three momentous hours in the story of a wife and husband: the birth of their child, the hour of her marriage, and the hour of her death. The range of joy and sorrow in these dramatic passages is set forth in Mr. Howells' own masterly way." The highly influential Author, Critic, and Playwright William Dean Howells (1837-1920), called "The Dean of American Letters" was both a prolific author and, from 1871 to 1881, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly magazine. [Howells dust jackets of the 1900-1910 period are quite scarce (much scarcer than Twain jackets in that period). These yellow Harper jackets are notoriously brittle and, when present, are usually found incomplete and with a good amount of wear and tear. However, this dust jacket is quite nearly complete and is one of the best of these yellow Howell dust jackets that we ever have seen. [PLEASE NOTE: The two images of the book lying flat make it appear to be brighter than it is.] A Fine copy in a Very Good example of the RARE dust jacket. Fine / very good. Item #3601

Price: $365.00