Creator
Title
Coverage
Publisher
Date
Description
Edited with an introduction by John Carter.
Provenance: John Carter, with his manuscript corrections and revisions; then John Sparrow, with his signature.
Labeled in John Carter's hand “2nd proof corrected” on the half-title and “final proof” on the divisional title for “The Garden of Cyrus.” Carter entered fourteen revisions on five pages of his introduction and nineteen corrections on eleven pages of the text of “Urne Buriall.” One of the revisions is the addition to the acknowledgments of the name of John Sparrow (collector, essayist, and warden of All Souls College), and this set of proofs is from Sparrow's library. His signature and note “d.d. editor” (that is, “given as a gift by the editor”) are on the front free endpaper. These proofs (which consist of the letterpress only and do not include Paul Nash's illustrations) document a stage in the production history of a book generally regarded as one of the high spots of twentieth-century book design: it is, for example, called one of the Curwen Press's masterpieces by Martin Hutner and Jerry Kelly in A Century for the Century (Grolier Club, 1999). (Some of Carter's work for the second edition of 1958 is also documented here: Sparrow laid in a carbon typescript that Carter had sent him listing ten possible corrections to be made in the new edition.)
My extensive assemblage of Carter material is part of my collection of the major figures in nineteenth- and twentieth-century bibliographical history; and it holds a special place for me, not only because of the distinction of Carter's achievements, but also because I knew him during the last ten years of his life and remain grateful for his kindness and help.