A Press to Die for
CROSBY, Harry. Chariot Of The Sun. Paris: At the Sign of the Sundial. 1928.
8vo. Thick paper covers without dustwrapper and all edges untrimmed; double rule black border with red title lettering; blind stamped publishers device to front fly leaf; additional painting of the author by Polia Chentoff loosely inserted acccompanied by a portait of the Sun from an engraving by A.E. Marty; some pages unopened; red sun design to back cover; pp. [16], 61, [7] ;White printed wrappers browned at edges with spine ends very slightly worn and miniaml stain to back cover; otherwise very good.
First Edition. One of only forty issued and extremely scare.
'Sleeping within her arms/I drove the chariot of the sun' (Angels of the Sun).
Chariot of the Sun begins with a dediction to Caresse Crosby, wife of the author, christened 'Queen of the Sun', for 'Si madame mourrais je mourrais avec elle' (if Madame died I would die with her)'. This statement has sinister resonance given that a year later Crosby would kill himself in a suicide pact with his younger lover, Boston socialite Josephine Rotch Bigelow, in a New York hotel room.
Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse (inventer of the modern bra) founded the influential Black Sun Press (at first, Éditions Narcisse after their black whippet) in 1927, initially as a means to publish their own work, but it would go on to secure a place as the longest running expatriate press founded in Paris during the 1920's. Their small but influential outlet became notorious for publishing the early works of the most prestigious Modernist writers of Gertude Stein's 'Lost Generation' such as Ernest Hemignway and Hart Crane as well as the first publications by the finest emerging writers including the then unknown James Joyce. His short story Tales Told of Shem and Shaun was later integrated into the iconic Finnegans Wake. Their books were in the majority published in very small quantities, usually less than 500 copies, making them exceptionally scarce.
Harry Crosby had an intense and obsessive fascination with the symbolism of the sun and his final diary entry reads; One is not in love unless one desires to die with one’s beloved/There is only one happiness it is to love and to be loved'.
Ezra Pound would write of his suicicde; "Crosby's life was a religious manifestation. His death was, if you like, a comprehensible emotional act…..A death from excess vitaliy. A vote of confidence in the cosmos".
After Harry's death, Caresse Crosby continued the press until her own death in 1970.
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