THE POINTS OF MY COMPASS

New York: Harper & Row, 1962. Near fine in very good plus jacket.. Signed first edition of White's collected dispatches to THE NEW YORKER, affectionately inscribed to the Sarasota physician whose good advice White cordially ignored. Sarasota, Florida, the setting and subject of one of this volume's Letters from the South, was also home to this copy's owner, internist Wesley Peterson, who diagnosed the ulcer interfering with White's enjoyment of COMPASS's generally good reviews: "My publisher writes that the book is doing well, for which I am thankful," he wrote to Edmund Ware Smith, "but what I'm waiting for now is for the author to do well. The ulcer diet doesn't bother me too much as I didn't pay a great deal of attention to it and decided instantly that I wouldn't quit drinking, no matter what the directions said." Gin, applied to White's ulcer and anxiety alike, was unable to forestall the "truly spectacular array of ailments and miseries" that followed; he then resorted to a "total collapse," which seemed to help more. A lovely and unique association copy from a bad patient and a fine essayist. 8.25'' x 5.5''. Original half black cloth with brown boards and gilt-lettered spine. In original unclipped ($4.00) dust jacket. 240 pages. Inscribed by White on front free endpaper: "For Dr. Wesley Peterson from his ulcerous and grateful patient EB White." Minor edgewear, faint toning and very faint foxing to endpapers and jacket verso. Jacket with mostly shallow chipping at spine ends, one slender chip affecting "THE," touch of sunning to spine.