David Karsner : Horace Traubel [ Signed Limited First Edition ]
$275
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Description
Signed limited first edition of David Karsner ‘s biography of Horace Traubel, socialist publisher and literary executor of Walt Whitman.
Karsner , David . Horace Traubel : His Life And His Work. Egmont Arens Washington Square Bookshop : New York. 1919. First Edition. Signed limited edition, #212 of 1000.
“Whitman was to Traubel what the sun, the rain and the wind are to the earth. Traubel, the earth, absorbed all of Whitman, the elements; and out of Traubel’s own soul and brain grew the perfect fruit…The two men stood together, in life, as in immortality. Their names will be as inseparable in history as they were in the sunset of Whitman’s life.”
Scarce first edition of socialist activist and journalist David Karsner ‘s celebrated biography of Horace Traubel, socialist writer and literary executor for the poet Walt Whitman, published the year of Traubel’s death.
Self-described as the poet’s “spirit child” Traubel was 15-years-old when he met the aging Whitman and spent the intervening 18 years recording their “Quaker talks” on various subjects. In addition to serving as the most active of Whitman’s post-mortem editors, Whitman also hosted Traubel’s wedding at his home in 1891, the year before his own death.
Arguably Traubel’s largest literary achievement was in capturing the political aspects of Walt Whitman’s philosophy, linking his ideas on transcendentalism and human equality to 20th-century social reform.
A passionate socialist, Traubel was the editor of The Worker (later, New York Call) as well as a correspondent of Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and Upton Sinclair as well as his eventual biographer, David Karsner. In addition to reading the early drafts of this biography, Traubel also supplied its introduction as explained in Karsner’s reverent forward.
This signed and hand numbered limited edition each featuring an inscription from Traubel was published by the Washington Square Bookshop by then-owner Egmont Arens prior to his transition from publishing and book design to industrial design.
8vo, 160pp, maroon cloth boards with title gilt to front and title, author, and publisher gilt to spine. Some wear to edges, spot on front board lower edge and back board face. Spine darkened with minor soiling. Bookblock darkened, some spotting. Pastedowns and endpapers toned, some foxing. Gift inscription front free endpaper, inscribed portrait of Traubel to author David Karsner beneath subject’s frontis portrait. Hand numbered #212 of 1000 on copyright page. Pages clean. Good condition.
If you liked this book, you might also like this early English translation of a French syndicalist novel subtitled, How We Will Bring About The Revolution.
