Robert Penn Warren remains the only writer to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry. In 1985, at the age of eighty, he gathered more than six decades of his poetry into New and Selected Poems, 1923–1985.
This is one of just 350 copies of the first Random House edition specially bound, numbered and signed by Warren. This copy is no. 272.
Warren is best remembered by many readers for All the King’s Men, his great political novel of the American South, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1947. Poetry, however, occupied him throughout his life. He received two further Pulitzer Prizes for his verse, for Promises in 1958 and Now and Then in 1979, and the year after this volume appeared he became the first writer to serve under the newly established title of Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
New and Selected Poems reaches back to work from the 1920s and follows Warren through more than sixty years of writing. Published in the year of his eightieth birthday, it reads almost as a retrospective of an entire literary life.
The limited issue was specially bound in burgundy cloth, with Warren’s initials and ornaments stamped in gilt on the upper board and the title lettered in gilt on the spine, and was supplied in a textured publisher’s slipcase. The limitation leaf states that 350 copies of the first Random House edition were specially bound, signed and numbered. Warren has signed this copy in full beneath the limitation statement.
An especially appealing addition to this copy is a newspaper clipping preserved with it by a previous owner: Warren’s essay “Poetry Is a Kind of Unconscious Autobiography,” from The New York Times Book Review. In it Warren reflects on how he became a poet, his early reading and the relationship between poetry, memory and personal experience. The article includes a photograph of Warren with poet and critic Allen Tate. The clipping was not issued with the book but has evidently been kept with this copy for some time.
Bibliographical details: Robert Penn Warren. New and Selected Poems, 1923–1985. New York: Random House, 1985. First Random House edition, limited issue. One of 350 specially bound copies signed and numbered by the author, this being no. 272. Original burgundy cloth lettered and decorated in gilt; publisher’s textured slipcase. ISBN 0-394-54586-9.
Condition: Near fine in a very good publisher’s slipcase. The cloth is clean and the gilt remains bright; binding firm and interior clean. Slipcase with light rubbing, surface marking and minor wear to extremities. The accompanying newspaper clipping is age-toned, folded and shows minor edge wear. The visible portion ends “Continued on next page”; only the material shown in the photographs accompanies the book.
