Ladies Bountiful.
Margaret Anderson’s Annotated Copy
Rogers, W.G. Ladies Bountiful. NY: Harcourt, Brace, (1968).
8vo.; purple cloth, spine stamped in gilt; edges sunned.
First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper: To Margaret Anderson with warmest thanks W.S. Rogers. February 1968. With Anderson’s occasional underlining and marginalia throughout, her “please return” note under her signature on the first blank, and her lengthy annotation on the half-title refuting a sentence she underlined on page 149 regarding her relationship with Little Review co-editor Jane Heap: “Margaret made Jane’s clothes and cut her hair, and Jane did the same for her.”
Page 149—untrue. I never made any clothes. I don’t even know how to sew on a button.
Jane could have been a tailor—she made me the most expert, beautiful suit. And she cut my hair: but no one was allowed to touch hers!
I asked Rogers to correct these errors, but he wouldn’t even answer my letter. Damn him!
Among Anderson’s pithier remarks are her comments on the quality of the photographs included. Of the shot of Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, she wrote: “What a pair!”; of Natalie Clifford Barney: “Much too flattering”; of Harriet Monroe: “Just like her”; of Nancy Cunard, simply: “Bad”; of Lady Ottoline Morrell: “Bad photo”; of the glamorous shot of herself and the mug-shot of Jane Heap: “Good of us both”; Sylvia Beach, honestly: “Bad photo”; and Janet Flanner: “Very good.” The handful of other editorial remarks sprinkled throughout include an assessment of Albert Barnes (“imbecile”), of Carl Sandburg (“boring”), and others.
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