Incidental Numbers

INSCRIBED TO CHRISTOPHER MORLEY WITH AN AUTOGRAPH NOTE BY HIM ABOUT THE INSCRIPTION

[WYLIE, Elinor]. Incidental Numbers. 16mo, original printed boards (hairline crack in front hinge), pp. 43. London: Printed by Wm. Clowes & Sons, 1912.

First Edition. The Frank Hogan copy. One of 65 copies of the author's first book, printed as a gift from her mother. This copy inscribed by the author on recto of free half of front end paper: "To Christopher Morley from his friend The Author who will so remain only so long as his anonymity is faithfully preserved." Inside front cover is an autograph note by Morley: "(Elinor Wylie's first book—inscribed by her in a disguised hand to avoid recognition—in the character of 'Adam Kinser Tutler', a pseudonym that she & [her husband] W[illiam] R[ose] B[enét] and I occasionally used for purposes of sport--) Christopher Morley." Morley was a close friend of the poet and her husband, with whom he began the Saturday Review of Literature in 1924. Morley wrote about Wylie in Keats (1821-1921) (1922), pp. 82-83. We quote from A Guide to the Papers of Elinor Wylie 1921-1928: A Collection in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature. (University of Virginia): "In 1912 she published privately a small book of poems, Incidental Numbers, none of which she later found worthy of inclusion in her subsequent volumes. Poems written between 1905 and 1911, indicate some themes she would continue to explore—magic, love, entrapment and isolation—and reveal her indebtedness to the poets of the aesthetic movement. Wylie kept this anonymous collection secret, claiming in a 1919 letter to Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry, 'I have never published anything, never tried to, until the last few weeks.'" Ours is the Frank Hogan copy, "…the first copy to appear at public sale…Inscribed by the author: 'To Christopher Morley'…Rare. A beautiful copy,"-The Frank Hogan Library, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., January 24, 1945, #739. With the elaborate gold stamped Hogan bookplate. It would appear from a note in the back that Hogan acquired it from Scribner's in 1939. This copy has been in private hands since the Hogan sale until it came to us. Besides our copy three copies have sold at auction since 1945, in 1974, 1976, and 2004, the latter inscribed to someone who couldn't have been terribly important as the Swann Auction Gallery catalogue doesn't mention to whom. Also, it was rebacked. Nearly fine, in ¼ slipcase. BAL 23483.