The Land of Little Rain (Lawrence Clark Powell's copy)
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1903. First edition. Hardcover. An association copy: Lawrence Clark Powell's copy with his bookplate on the pastedown. This is the second printing (the first printing has a "Note on the Illustrations" in brown ink that is tipped-in rather than in black ink and bound in; and the first printing has vignette illustrations in a very dark brown versus a lighter brown in the second and third impressions). Powell was a prolific author on the literature of California and the American Southwest and a significant librarian, critic, and bibliographer at UCLA and the University of Arizona. He wrote about and praised Austin in many venues, for example in California Classics: The Creative Literature of the Golden State: "With her feet on the earth and her head in the sky, she gave voice in singing prose to the soul of a hitherto unsung land.” In particular, he was fond of her later The Land of Journeys' Ending (a copy he found in Paris as a young man was deeply influential and ultimately helped bring him back to California) and his devotion was such that a character in his novel El Morro (1984) was a self-described big fan of the book. But he also praised The Land of Little Rain, describing it as "the ripest, richest book of the many she wrote.” A nice association as such: Powell was one of Mary Austin's foremost 20th century champions and critics. Green cloth with stamped illustration and gilt lettering. Top edge gilt. Very good with rubbing namely to spine ends and corners. The lower corner of the frontispiece tissue guard is also torn. In a custom slipcase. . Very good. Item #2168
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Price: $950.00 save 5% $902.50