Weeds. 2 copies.
Two Inscribed Copies
Kelley, Edith Summers. Weeds. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., (1923).
8vo.; eggplant cloth, stamped in green; spine browned; homemade beige dust-jacket with handwritten notes on the upper panel. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
Boxed together with:
Kelley, Edith Summers. Weeds. London: Jonathan Cape, (1924).
8vo.; with two post-marked handwritten envelopes affixed to the front and rear pastedowns; black cloth, stamped in orange; yellow, red, and black dust-jacket, edgeworn, lightly rubbed.
Boxed together with:
A few items of Kelley ephemera, including a black-and-white photograph taken late in the author’s life, a hand-drawn sketch of Kelley, a newspaper ad from The New York Times Book Review announcing the re-issue of Weeds, and two photocopies of Weeds reviews from The Springfield Republican, Nov. 18, 1923.
First American and UK editions of the author’s first novel. The American edition is inscribed on the front endpaper: George Matthew Adams/ With very grateful/ thoughts to an unseen/ friend, this landful of/ bitter herbs. Edith Summers Kelley. The English edition is inscribed by Matthew J. Bruccoli, who wrote the afterword to the Lost American Fiction edition of the book: This is the copy I used for Lost American Fiction. I bought it from Michael Papantonio at 7 Gables on a hunch: I had never heard of it before I found it in a box of books Mike had acquired from the George Michael Adams’ library. Matthew J. Bruccoli. Kelley used the envelopes pasted into this copy to send letters to Mr. John Wilson Townsend in Lexington, KY, and both are post-marked 1924.
The recipient of the first copy, George Michael Adams, was a fellow author who wrote inspirational books including Just Among Friends (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1928) and Better Than Gold (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1949). Bruccoli acquired this copy of Weeds from New York bookseller Michael Papantonio, who bought Adams’s library in 1971.
Both of these copies were owned by Bruccoli and some of his notes appear on the makeshift dust-jacket on the American edition. He lists several page numbers with comments:
14 – too much life
22 – nature
88 – curse of the soil
103
195
These notes all refer to quotations from significant passages in the novel. On page 14, tobacco farmer Bill Pippinger watches his wife Judith and worries that she might have “too much life, too much life for a gal!” On page 88, Judith describes feeling lucky to have escaped “the curse of the soil.”
Weeds was the first book rescued from obscurity by the Southern Illinois University Press as part of their Lost American Fiction series, which was started in 1972. Bruccoli, along with founding director of the SIU Press, Vernon Sternberg, reissued a total of 29 books for the series. After recovering a manuscript from Kelley’s son Patrick, Bruccoli spearheaded the effort to publish The Devil’s Hand, Kelley’s other major work. The first edition of The Devil’s Hand appeared in 1974, almost two decades after Kelley’s death.
Very little has been written about the life of Edith Summers Kelley (1884-1956), who was born and raised in Toronto and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1903. After moving to New York and working as a freelance writer and editor, she was hired as secretary to Upton Sinclair, who described Kelley as “a golden-haired and shrewdly observant young person whose gentle voice and unassuming ways gave us no idea of her talent.” Kelley worked with Sinclair at Princeton and at Helicon Hall, an experimental artists’ colony in New Jersey.
Kelley was at one point engaged to Sinclair Lewis, another resident at Helicon Hall, but for reasons unknown, the engagement was broken off. Kelley instead married Allan Updegraff, another writer, and had two children by him. The couple, however, struggled financially and moved around the country trying a variety of occupations in order to support their fa
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