{"product_id":"williams-william-carlos-paterson","title":"WILLIAMS, William Carlos. Paterson.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘A Man in Himself is a City’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWILLIAMS, William Carlos.\u003c\/strong\u003e Paterson. \u003ci\u003eNew York: New Directions Books\u003c\/i\u003e. 1946–1958.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFive volumes, 8vo. Publisher’s tan cloth boards titled in gilt to upper board, title superimposed on narrow rectangles (black, green, dark blue, sienna, and orange respectively to each volume) stamped across boards and spine, foredges untrimmed, all volumes in the original uncut dust-jackets, New Directions Books subscription request slip loosely inserted to vol. I; jackets with some light toning, verso of jackets with some offsetting from coloured rectangles and a few light spots, vols I and II have some light spotting to cloth; very minor offsetting to pastedowns; a sharp and attractive set, near fine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst editions, first impressions, in uncommonly fine condition, of Williams’ great American epic, a landmark of twentieth-century poetry. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eComposed of five books and a later fragment of a sixth, \u003ci\u003ePaterson\u003c\/i\u003e was issued in five separate volumes in 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1958, before the work was collected in a single volume in 1963. Growing out of a much shorter 1926 poem Williams wrote after reading Joyce’s \u003ci\u003eUlysses\u003c\/i\u003e, Paterson evolved over several decades, reflecting Williams’s ambition to forge a distinctly American poetic idiom, sound and structure: an American epic circumventing the referential density, allusiveness, and essentially European literary traditions exemplified by Eliot’s \u003ci\u003eThe Waste Land\u003c\/i\u003e and Pound’s \u003ci\u003eThe Cantos\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe work takes its title from the New Jersey city where Williams lived and practised medicine for much of his life (he would occasionally draft poems on prescription blanks), a profession that brought him into closer contact with the everyday and quotidian than most of his literary peers. He strongly believed that industrial America could sustain an epic of its own. For Williams, the city was ‘my “case” to work up[,] call[ing] for a poetry such as I did not know […]’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWallace A24a, A25a, A30a, A34a, and A44a. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2122836\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":65052332753273,"sku":"2122836","price":3000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2122836.jpg?v=1793380790","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/williams-william-carlos-paterson","provider":"Sotheran's","version":"1.0","type":"link"}