Literature and Books of Merit from Whitmore Rare Books

Whitmore Rare Books has issued their Catalogue 6, “offering literary first editions and other books of merit.” Literary works dominate the selection, but everything presented is meritorious, so what is not literature still fits the description. As “books of merit,” you will recognize most of these books or their authors. Their merit has been recognized. And, we will now recognize a few of the specific titles offered.

Item 28 is one of those iconic books of 20th century American literature, The Great Gatsby. There is not much to be said about it that is not already well known. It is a work of the “Jazz Age,” the “Roaring Twenties,” whatever one wants to call the era. F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his wife Zelda, lived the lifestyle to the fullest, supported by this and some earlier successes of Scott's writing. Offered is a first edition of Gatsby, published in 1925. The book was not a major success at the time, doing little to stop what was now a rapid downward spiral in the lives of the Fitzgeralds. Priced at $2,650.

By 1932, the Fitzgeralds' situation had deteriorated into complete chaos. Scott was drinking heavily, and Zelda's mind no longer functioned correctly. She had already spent a considerable time institutionalized in Europe when she entered psychiatric facilities at Johns Hopkins Hospital that year. However, it was at this time that Zelda grabbed her pen and wrote her only published novel (she was a published writer of magazine articles and shorter pieces). The result of her brief outburst of writing is Save Me The Waltz. While a work of “fiction,” the story largely parallels the lives of the Fitzgeralds. Scott was not pleased. He had been working for ages on a novel based on the same story (Tender is the Night), and demeaned Zelda's writing skills. Between that and disappointing sales, it must have only added to the burdens upon her troubled mind. Item 29 is a copy of Zelda's novel that belonged to Elizabeth Boyd, childhood friend of “Scottie” Fitzgerald, Scott and Zelda's daughter and only child. $5,000.

Speaking of 20^th century American literary icons, if there is a book more iconic than Gatsby, it is this one: Gone With The Wind. This book is set in the South, from whence the Fitzgeralds came, but in the days after the Civil War, when antebellum splendor turned into the defeated's reality. Item 48 is a May 1936 first edition in a first issue dust jacket of Margaret Mitchell's classic. The copy has been signed by Miss Mitchell. $16,500.

Here is another important book, but for very different reasons. Sadly, it was not fiction. Jacob Riis came to America as a young man, lived in the slums of New York at first, got a job as a police reporter, and became both a photographer and reporter. He is particularly noted as a pioneer in flash photography, which allowed him to display images of some of the darker, seamier sides of New York City. Item 55 is a copy of his “muckraking” book from 1890, How The Other Half Lives. Riis focused particularly on Manhattan's tenements, places where immigrants lived in terrible squalor. People would be jammed into small tenement apartments, often large, extended families. They were frequently dark, dirty, and unsanitary. The terrible poverty would lead to other problems, heavy drinking in particular. Children would often spend their days working in the nearby sweatshops. Riis believed middle and upper class people did not realize how bad the conditions were in the slums, and with this book, which features both textual descriptions and Riis' photographs, he set out to make them understand. One of the people whose eye Riis caught, and became a follower of his mission, was a young Theodore Roosevelt, just working his way up in New York politics at the time. Riis' influence was obviously significant, as Roosevelt would go on to be a dedicated reformer. Item 55. $1,850.