Poems. North and South - A Cold Spring.
BELATED DEDICATION COPY TO HER PHYSICIAN
DR. ANNY BAUMANN
“BETTER LATE THAN NEVER”
Bishop, Elizabeth. Poems, North & South. A Cold Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955.
8vo.; light blue cloth; light wear; dust-jacket; light wear.
First edition. A review copy, with publisher’s slip loosely inserted, giving publication date “July 14, 1955.”
Author’s second book, which won her the Pulitzer Prize, and which collects her first book of poetry, North and South (1946), with her newest cycle of poems, A Cold Spring, hitherto unpublished.
An extraordinary association copy, with a small note on front free endpaper directing the owner to See Page 59-E.B.; and on page 59, beneath the printed dedication leaf of A Cold Spring, which reads simply “To Dr. Anny Baumann,” Bishop has added in her spidery hand this ink inscription: With affection & admiration from Elizabeth Bishop (Dec. 22, 1971 — I don’t know why this wasn’t signed before —but better late than never.)
Dr. Anny Baumann was one of the most important people in Bishop’s life. In “Dr. Anny,” Bishop found not only a personal physician who treated her for her alcoholism and allergies and weight problems, but also a friend and something of a surrogate mother (Bishop’s own mother was institutionalized when Elizabeth was a child), who helped Bishop with a variety of emotional issues. Baumann’s correspondence with Dr. Baumann (now at Bishop’s alma mater, Vassar College) lasted over three decades, and remains one of the most important sources for insight into Bishop’s life and poetry. It is not hard to see in this inscribed dedication an echo of Bishop’s poem, also dedicated to Dr. Baumann, entitled “Belated Dedication.” The typescript of that poem, unpublished and undated, is at Vassar.
Provenance: From the collection of bookseller and small publisher, Robert Wilson of The Phoenix
Bookshop in New York City. Wilson published Bishop’s Poems in and edition of 100 copies.
(#4655483)
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