Twelve Poems by Edith Wharton

London: The Medici Society, 1926. First edition. Original blue-grey paper boards, cloth spine, extremities slightly worn, a very good copy. Bookplates of Robert and Mildred Bliss, Dumbarton Oaks. Garrison A40. First edition, copy number 10 of 130 copies (100 for sale), printed on handmade paper. Most of the edition had a facsimile signature stamp on page [ii] below the hand-written number (these are often erroneously catalogued as genuine signatures). It is tempting to think that the first thirty (and maybe a few more) were those hors commerce copies purchased by Wharton before the stamp was applied, in order to be personalized. Inscribed by Wharton to her friends Robert and Mildred Bliss, "For Robert & Mildred from Edith Christmas 1926." Wharton and Mildred Bliss had become close doing war relief work for French children. Robert Woods Bliss was then the American ambassador to Sweden, and the Blisses had begun an effort to nominate Wharton for the Nobel Prize. Wharton wrote him on January 2, 1927, sending him a number of her books which Bliss had requested to help in this effort, but noting that, [already] "the Twelve Poems are unobtainable." Bliss then lent this copy to the Swedish librarian Carl Grönblad, whose card returning it is also enclosed.