TWENTY-FIVE POEMS [INSCRIBED TO EUGENE O'NEILL]

Paris: Contact Editions, 1923. First Edition, 1/300 copies. Softcover. Octavo, 52 pages; G; in publisher's grey wrappers lettered in black; lacking original glassine wrapper, rear cover, parts of spine; front cover detached but present; Signed flat by Hartley on the title page; Additionally inscribed by Hartley on the dedication page: "For Eugene + Agnes O'Neill - these satires which will I hope amuse them. love to you both. Marsden. New York June 6. 1924"; with ink hand-corrections to pages 4, 5, 12, 34, 47, and 57; minuscule tear to middle of page 27; CX consignment; shelved case 0. This an early publication of Contact Editions, issued shortly after publishing Hemingway's Ten Poems. This was Hartley's first book, published in an edition of approximately 300 copies.;




Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) the American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist, had an long-lasting relationship with playwright Eugene O'Neill. Strange Interlude, the play for which O'Neill won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, features a queer character named Charles Marsden. While modeled on gay painter Charles Demuth, there is a clear connection to gay artist Marsden Hartley in the surname. Hartley, being well involved with the international avant-garde of the time, was friends with O'Neill. O'Neill, Hartley, and Demuth lived together at the artist's colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts from July through October 1916 and Hartley continued in Bermuda in the winter of 1916 to 1917 with Charles Demuth.;. 1345991. Shelved Dupont Bookstore.