O to Be a Dragon (association copy)

NY: Viking Press, 1959. First edition. Hardcover. Near fine/Near fine. Third printing. An association copy: not signed, but Louis Untermeyer's copy with a letter to him from Moore in its original envelope tipped in on the front pastedown. Also tipped in on the front free endpaper is a clipping of the original review of the book by Karl Shapiro in the New York Times Book Review with Untermeyer's notation at the top. The letter is on stationary with her Brooklyn address; it's written with a poet's flair, but seems to be about the possibility of a children's book about reindeer for Collier Books. She finishes,"Your equipoise and generosity are an example to me -- (am myself besieged by unnecessary mail!)." Signed and with two hand corrections to the letter. Marianne Moore is one of our most important modernist poets (known, also, for her writing about animals), and she was a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her Collected Poems won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize in 1951. Louis Untermeyer was an important and prolific poet, critic, and anthologist who served as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (now the Poet Laureate) from 1961-1963, so he was in office when this letter from Moore was written.

A slender collection of fifteen poems. Blue paper boards in a gray cloth spine. A very good copy with light rubbing to bottom edge of boards and ghosting beneath the newspaper clipping affix to the FFEP that's also gone through to the half-title page. In a near fine or better jacket.