Making of Americans, The.
One Of Five Copies
Printed On Japanese Vellum, Bound In Parchment
—
With A Tls From Stein To The Publisher
Stein, Gertrude. The Making of Americans. Being a History of a Family’s Progress. Written by Gertrude Stein 1906-1908. (Printed by Maurice Darantiere at Dijon-France M.CM .XXV.) (The following is printed on the 7 ¼ x 11” page opposite the title page: “Copyrighted by the author. Published by Contact Editions / Three Mountains Press / Paris, Ile Saint-Louis, Quai d’Anjou, 29.”)
8 ¼ x 13”; green satin book mark; TLS bound-in after first blank; four leaves 7 ¼ x 11” bound-in after TLS: three blanks, plus half-title with copyright notice on verso; white parchment over boards, author and title stamped in gilt on upper panel; spine “sewn” to covers with four parchment “threads,” two broken on upper panel. Note that throughout this volume the text takes up 4 ½ x 6 ½” of each page, regardless of the size of the leaf; and that the leaves alternate between groups of 4 leaves of 7 ½ x 11 ¾” and groups of 4 leaves of 7 ¼ x 11.” In most instances the final leaf in each group is unopened.
First edition, deluxe issue of Stein’s most enduring work, perceived by critics to be the high water mark of her experimental style and a foundational text of English language modernism. One of five copies printed on Japanese vellum and bound in white parchment-covered boards, stamped in gilt. Wilson A6b. Of those five copies, the disposition of four are known: one is at Yale University, the gift of Donald Gallup, one of Stein’s literary executors; one was in the collection of Robert Wilson, Stein’s bibliographer, and is now at the University of Delaware; a third is at the Pierpont Morgan Library, the gift of Jane Englehart; this is the fourth. The fifth, Stein’s own copy, is believed to have been lost during the upheaval of World War II.
With a typed letter signed, “Gertrude Stein,” tipped in after the first blank; February 13, 1926, one 5 x 8” leaf of Stein’s Paris letterhead, 27 Rue de Fleurus, to publisher Bill Bird.
Dear Mr. Bird: — I have just received the enclosed letter from Darantiere and am sending it to you and will you let me know that you have gotten it. A very kind remembrance to Mrs. Bird. Yours sincerely, Gertrude Stein.
Bird published The Making of Americans under his Three Mountains Press imprint jointly with Robert McAlmon’s Contact Editions, had it printed by Maurice Darantiere in Dijon, and distributed it through Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company. This massive text was substantially redacted for the American audience by Stein’s principal French translator, Bernard Fay for Harcourt Brace in 1934.
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