Ansel Adams: Trees (inscribed by Annie Dillard and her husband Robert Richardson)
NY: Little, Brown, 2004. First edition. Hardcover. A wonderful association copy, inscribed by both Annie Dillard and her husband Robert Richardson on the half-title page in the year of publication: "For Liz and Deems, may you flourish long as trees! Love, Annie, Christmas 2004"; "I will never see, it seems, a tree as nice as Liz and Deems. Bob." A unique item that would, we suggest, make a standout holiday gift. The association is fitting considering Dillard's place in nature writing and, in particular, her affection for trees. She is in fact a contributor to this book, which highlights on page 35 a passage about a sycamore from her Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek . One also thinks of her famous "tree with the lights in it" from Pilgrim (see this brief commentary from the Harvard Divinity School). The recipients were their friends Liz Lear and her partner Deems Webster; Liz was on the board of the Key West Literary Seminars and was an important member of the Key West writing community, where Dillard and Richardson wintered (a brief tribute to Lear by writer Joy Williams). In this book, Ansel Adam's magnificent tree photos are gathered along with arboreal writing from some the greats including Dillard, John Muir, Wendell Berry, Walt Whitman, Diane Ackerman, Wallace Stevens, John Fowles, Gary Snyder, Edwin Way Teale, Hal Borland, Robinson Jeffers, Henry David Thoreau, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Carlos Williams, and of course Ansel Adams himself. Likely one of Annie Dillard's own contributor copies. Richardson was an accomplished biographer of Thoreau, Emerson, and William James, the latter of which won a Bancroft Prize. Quarto in green cloth with silver lettering to spine. Photographic endpapers with his classic image of an orchard in Portola Valley, CA. Very good or better with very light bumping to corners, top board edges slightly faded, and the top face of the text block with a light speckle of foxing. In a very good, price-clipped jacket with a little creasing to corners and spine ends and light wear to top edges. Unique. Very good / Very good. Item #2196
ISBN: 0821277529
More about the book:
"The legendary artist Ansel Adams was a keen photographer of trees and forest woodlands, distilling their essence in striking black-and-white images. This book presents some 50 of Adam's finest photographs of trees-a personal vision ranging from stirring portraits of the giant oaks in Yosemite Valley to the shimmering beauty of an aspen grove in New Mexico; majestic pine forests to leafy deciduous woods; exquisite details of bark and wood to snow-laden branches against the sky; and, of course, many a portrait of the ancient trees of the Sierra and the American West."
Price: $3,750.00 save 5% $3,562.50