An American Year (inscribed to Robert Lawson, illustrator of Ferdinand)
NY: Simon and Schuster, 1946. First edition. Hardcover. An association copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper: "For Marie + Robert Lawson, Cordially, Hal Borland." Uncommon signed. Robert Lawson is renown as the illustrator of the children's book The Story of Ferdinand (the bull). A nice association in this context as Borland's "reflective journal . . . concerned chiefly with the slow rhythms and quiet, ordered ways of nature in the American countryside" is here illustrated with fifty etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs from leading artists of the time including Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson Lee Nesbitt, John McCrady, Philip Cheney, Hans Kleiber, W.R Locke, Julian Levi, Adolf Dehn, S. De Martelly, Arnold Blanch, Hannes Box, and many others. Thus a nice connection among illustrators.
Hal Borland (see his NYT obit) was a prominent mid-century nature writer who grew up in Colorado and ended up writing especially about rural life and ecology in Connecticut by way time working in publishing in New York City. He won the John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing in 1968 for Hill Country Harvest, and his papers are held at Yale's Beinecke Library along with those of his second wife, the writer Barbara Dodge Borland. He is known especially for his attention to phenology and the seasons, a passion of so many nature writers.
A very good or better book with just some light sunning to spine. In a good dust jacket with two-inch tear along spine and several other chips, plus additional wear, but the panels present well. Very good / Good. Item #1345
Price: $750.00 save 5% $712.50