ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE

1912. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912. 4 pp undated ads. Original purple cloth.

First Edition of Willa Cather's first novel, published near the end of Cather's stint as managing editor of McClure's Magazine. It is about world-renowned bridge-builder Bartley Alexander, his mid-life crisis, and a new bridge with a flaw; it takes place in New England, largely in Boston, as it would not be until the following year (with O PIONEERS!) that the author would realize that her best writing would reflect her own upbringing on the Nebraska prairies. This copy is of the second and usual issue, with the half-title after rather than before (truncated) the title leaf (only a small number of the initial edition, perhaps just a handful, had the half-title first). This copy is in purple cloth (whether Crane's "coarse" or "rough" it is hard to say), stamped in gilt; some are in blue or grey-green cloth stamped in gilt, and other later ones are in various colors of cloth stamped in blue (and with the author's middle initial absent). (The book did not sell well, and some of the 5,270 copies were not issued in this last binding until MY ÁNTONIA boosted the author's popularity in 1918.) The author herself wrote in a copy, "This book was bound up in odds and ends of cloth, as the publishers did not think much of it." Condition is near-fine (minor fading, a faint scratch but scarcely any other wear). Crane A5.a.1. Provenance: bookplate of Percival G. White; bookplate of The Estelle Doheny Collection of American Literature (multiple sales in 1987-1989). (Inventory #: 15638)