Presented by a mother to a mother
CROSBY, Harry; Henrietta Grew CROSBY (editor). War Letters. Paris: The Black Sun Press. 1932.
4to. Original calf-backed marbled boards, spine gilt-ruled in compartments with 2 green morocco lettering pieces, marbled endpapers, yellow and white silk page-marker; pp. [8], viii, 312, [6], photographic portrait frontispiece of Crosby in uniform, with tissue guard, p. 305 with 12th line from bottom blacked out as usual; extremities a little rubbed, light spotting to text block and to prelims, otherwise a very good copy; loosely inserted visiting card of “Mrs Stephen Van Rensselaer Crosby”, inscribed in ink “Dear Rita / It was lovely seeing you yesterday. I wish we met oftener. I hope you’ll enjoy these letters. I always feel a great bond with you but our boys are at rest and saved from the hard things of life. Much love / Rita” (see below).
First edition, one of 125 unnumbered copies printed on Navarre paper, apparently a presentation copy with a loosely inserted visiting card inscribed by Henrietta Crosby (née Grew, 1872-1957), mother of Harry Crosby and editor of the book.
Published a year after Harry Crosby’s suicide, this book gathers the letters he sent home to his family, while volunteering in the American Ambulance Corps during the First World War. It was edited by his mother Henrietta, who added a chronology and brief preface.
Crosby and his wife Caresse founded The Black Sun Press in Paris in the late 1920s. American expatriates living in France, they championed and published the early works of writers including Hart Crane, D.H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, and Ernest Hemingway.
Provenance: This copy of War Letters was seemingly presented by Henrietta Crosby to a close friend – a woman who, like her, had recently lost a son.
Minkoff A-43.
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