A Navajo Sketch Book (signed, N. Scott Momaday's copy)
Flagstaff: Northland Press, 1962. First edition. Hardcover. Second printing, 1968. Signed by Perceval on the half title page. From the library of N. Scott Momaday, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for House of the Rising Dawn in 1969 and a key figure of the literary Native American Renaissance. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2007. The slightly shaky ownership signature "Momaday" is written at the top of the pastedown, possibly in the hand of another family member. This book is a collection of pen-and-ink sketches and watercolors done of the Navajo reservation over thirty-five years by Don Perceval, who was born in England, but grew up in Los Angeles and started visiting the reservation in 1929. Both N. Scott Momaday and his father Al were visual artists and one imagines this book was part of their greater reference collection. With an introduction by Clay Lockett. A small quarto in beige cloth. A fine copy in a good or better dust jacket with tape reinforcement to top of spine and, mainly, splitting at each end of the front flap fold (Lawrence Powell Clark calls the jacket "Merely the most beautiful book cover ever printed in Arizona"). A nice association. Fine / Good. Item #1927
Price: $375.00 save 5% $356.25