A Wine of Wizardry And Other Poems

San Francisco, CA: A. M. Robertson. Very Good+. 1909. 1st Edition; 1st state. Hardcover. First Edition, First State, with illustration of a chalice on the front cover. The book is in Very Good+ condition and is lacking a dust jacket. The spine ends and corners of the book covers have some light bumping and rubbing. There are a couple of small spots of discoloration on the book covers. The text pages are clean and bright. The foredge and bottom edges of the text block are uncut. This copy has three former owner's bookplates on three different pages: the bookplate of Janet Calhoun on the front pastedown page, the bookplate of James Wyckoff on the front endpaper, and the bookplate of Margery A, Cellier on the first free page. "He was one of the founders of the Carmel art colony and the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club. On July 16, 1908, Sterling was toastmaster for thirty-two members of the club for the first annual breakfast held at the clubhouse. When a firestorm of controversy followed Sterling's publication of A Wine of Wizardry in the Cosmopolitan magazine of September 1907, other rebels flocked to Carmel, including Upton Sinclair and the MacGowan sisters. The death by poison of the young poet Nora May French in Sterling's home drew national press coverage. The suicide of Sterling's wife by cyanide only added fuel to the flames. Sterling's own diaries and correspondence reveal a more sedate, but still Bohemian community. He often volunteered at Carmel's Forest Theater and once played a starring role in Mary Austin's play The Fire. " (from Wikipedia) " the publication of George Sterling's epic poem "A Wine of Wizardry," which first appeared in the Cosmopolitan magazine in September 1907. The poem stirred a reaction that rippled back and forth across the continent, thrusting Sterling into a cultural firestorm fueled by the vitriol of his mentor, Ambrose Bierce. Critics from everywhere weighed in, and, for a brief moment, San Francisco and Sterling assumed center stage in a nationwide cause celebre. Sterling - the colorful scion of a Long Island whaling family who had come west in 1890, to work as a secretary in his uncle's East Bay real estate firm - was then in his mid-30s, handsome, athletic and rakish. He was also Jack London's best friend. By World War I, he would be known as the King of Bohemia and the poet laureate of San Francisco, but, by 1907, he had published only one short (albeit accomplished) volume of poetry, "The Testimony of the Suns" (1903) and a scattering of poems, primarily in local newspapers and lesser-known literary journals." (George Sterling's 'Wine of Wizardry' sparked a clash of critics, Geoffrey Dunn Dec 23, 2007) .