Poets Biography

Hardcover. St. Paul MN, Graywolf Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 242 pages. The Arab poet's story, from her childhood in Nablus, on the West Bank of the Jordan, between the world wars to the occupation by the Israelis in 1967. A rare glimpse of Arab culture from a woman's perspective. Includes a selection of her poetry. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, New Directions, reprint, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 367 pages. (previously published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1966). Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 375 pages. B&W photographs and illustrations. Pictorial dust jacket. Green cloth with gilt title to spine. Erratum laid-in. Overall, a clean, tight copy. ohn Betjeman was by far the most popular poet of the twentieth century; his collected poems sold more than two million copies. As poet laureate of England, he became a national icon, but behind the public man were doubts and demons. The poet best known for writing hymns of praise to athletic middle-class girls on the tennis courts led a tempestuous emotional life. For much of his fifty-year marriage to Penelope Chetwode, the daughter of a field marshal, Betjeman had a relationship with Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Betjeman, a devout Anglican, was tormented by guilt about the storms this emotional triangle caused. Betjeman, published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth, is the first to use fully the vast archive of personal material relating to his private life, including literally hundreds of letters written by his wife about their life together and apart. Here too are chronicled his many friendships, ranging from "Bosie" Douglas to the young satirists of Private Eye, from the Mitford sisters to the Crazy Gang. This is a celebration of a much-loved poet, a brave campaigner for architecture at risk, and a highly popular public performer. Betjeman was the classic example of the melancholy clown, whose sadness found its perfect mood music in the hymns of a poignant Anglicanism. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Santa Rosa, Black Sparrow Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 341 pages, Hardcover with no dust jacket. SIGNED BY CREELEY, numbered 125 of 150 signed hardcovers. Tight copy with light edgewear to cover boards.

Hardcover. Grand Rapids MI, Eerdmans Publishing , 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 199 pages. A brief account of Williams' life and examination of his early poems, the criticism, biographies and plays, the novels, the Arthurian poems and his theological writings. Light edge wear to dust jacket. Else a very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In 1386, Geoffrey Chaucer endured his worst year, but began his best poem. The father of English literature did not enjoy in his lifetime the literary celebrity that he has today--far from it. The middle-aged Chaucer was living in London, working as a midlevel bureaucrat and sometime poet, until a personal and professional crisis set him down the road leading to The Canterbury Tales. Brought expertly to life by Paul Strohm, this is the eye-opening story of the birth one of the most celebrated literary creations of the English language. INSCRIBED BY STROHM on the title page.

Hardcover. NY, Rinehart & Co., 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 241 pages. The author Cook was an English professor at Middlebury College for many years, and involved with Bread Loaf Writer's Conference almost from its inception, as Robert Frost was. INSCRIBED by Robert Frost (the subject) to Cook (the author).

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 213 pages, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 589 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Remainder mark on bottom text block. Tight copy. Light rubbing to dust jacket.

Softcover. NY, Grove Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 239 pages. Hettie Jones presents an intimate memoir of her life--from her middle-class Jewish family in Queens to her marriage to the controversial black poet LeRoi Jones and her search for her own artistic voice. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Henry Holt & Company, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 332 pages. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket with slight crease to rear cover, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1898, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 303 pages. Hardcover. B/w illustrations throughout (plates). Tissue guard on frontispiece. Deckled edges. Boards bound in dark green, gilt title on spine and front cover with decoration. Top edge gilt. Edges and pages have some tanning. Binding tight. Spine slightly frayed at top and bottom. Clean inside. Beautiful old book.

Softcover. Durango CO, Logbridge-Rhodes, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 150 pages, b&w illustrations. Poems by Wright, with letters, interviews, memoirs, elegies, a chronology, and bibliography. Light fade to spine, otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, David McKay, 1st thus, 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering and black stamped detail to front board, gilt decorative detail/ lettering to spine, top edge gilt, portrait frontispiece with facsimile signature and dedication to David McKay with tissue guard, 2 pull-out sections of facsimile handwritten autobiography notes by author. Bright, clean copy.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Ontario Review Press, reprint, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 384 pages. An intimate account of the sudden rise to literary fame and long, inexorable decline of Delmore Schwartz, a complex and deeply troubled man who was keenly aware of his own inner contradictions, as revealed by his correspondence. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Edward Moxon, 1st, 1849, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Three hardcovers bound in polished calf, gilt rules to covers, black leather labels on spine with orate gilt decorations. Pages: xx+480+viii+464+viii+460, appendix, index. Marbled endpapers and text edges. Aside from previous owner's bookplate on inside cover of each volume, a bright, clean set. Biography of the Scottish poet, incorporating many of his letters.

Hardcover. NY, W W Norton & Co , 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In this compelling new study of one of the century's most memorable poets, Jon Stallworthy has produced an outstanding full-scale biography of Louis MacNeice, drawing on the testimony of family, friends, lovers, and MacNeice's extensive unpublished correspondence and papers. Stallworthy, whose Wilfred Owen was described by Graham Greene as "one of the finest biographies of our time," has produced another no less remarkable life of an equally haunting figure. MacNeice's mother died when he was seven and Stallworthy shows how his imagination transmuted her ghostly presence, and the powerful presence of his father, into an elemental opposition structuring most of what he would write - from anguished indictments of his native Ireland to poignant love poems.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 497 pages. "The critic Adam Plunkett expertly teases out the many meanings of Frost's poems . . . Blending biography and criticism, Plunkett shows how the circumstances of Frost's peripatetic life gave rise to some of his most successful poems. As in the best critical biographies, Plunkett does not merely track down real-world inspiration for a given work. Rather, he brings together Frost's personal life, literary sources, and publication history to enrich our understanding of the poems, then uses the poems to enhance our understanding of the life. The result is a thorough, elegant, and, at times, surprising study of Frost, who emerges as a remarkably complex poet and a compelling but complicated man." -Maggie Doherty, The New Yorker. Clean copy.

Softcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st pbk, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 530 pages. Books about thinkers require a kind of unity that their thought may not possess. This cautionary statement is especially applicable to Mikhail Bakhtin, whose intellectual development displays a diversity of insights that cannot be easily integrated or accurately described in terms of a single overriding concern. Clean, bright copy, as new.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Chilton Book Company, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 383 pages. Hardcover. 8 pages of black & white photographs. Foxing to top edge. Light wear to dust jacket edges. Clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1st ed., 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 292 pages. Blue cloth boards. Pictorial dust jacket is tinted with light fading to spine. Otherwise, tight clean copy.

Hardcover. Syracuse University Press , 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 493 pages. Remainder line and foxing to top edge, light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Viking, 1st thus, 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 135 pages. Previous owners name at top right edge of front endpaper. Minor foxing to preliminary pages. Maroon cloth covers with narrow section of fade at top edge of front cover. Dust jacket with edgewear, light chipping and tiny holes along folds - jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin , 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket, 540 pages. A comprehensive collection of letters from Jarrell. Edited by his second wife Mary Jarrell with the assistance of Stuart Wright. Jarrell's letters span over fifty years and document his life, thoughts, and writing. The letters are insightful and often humorous, and provide a unique perspective on the author's life and work. Paper covered boards with a cloth spine, dust jacket with mild soil, stain. No markings.