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CATHER, Willa.
The Troll Garden.
Publisher: New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1905
Stock code: 43240
Price: £50,000 Currency Conversion
First edition of the author's first prose work. Presentation copy; inscribed to the great American illustrator and writer Howard Pyle, "Will Mr. Howard Pyle accept through me the love of seven big and little children to whom he taught the beauty of language and of line, and to whom, in a desert place, he sent the precious message of Romance. Willa Sibert Cather, April 26, 1906." With Pyle's illustrated bookplate on the front pastedown, and that of collector F.B. Adams, Jr. on the verso of the front free endpaper. In a custom clamshell box. The "seven big and little children" referred to are almost certainly Cather, her five siblings and their live-in cousin; the "desert place" was Nebraska; the "precious message of Romance" was provided by Howard Pyle's illustrated writings, which were favorites of children in Willa Cather's generation. She would have probably read his romances: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Otto of the Silver Hand, Men of Iron, The Story of King Arthur, and others. Cather's warm, heartfelt inscription is a poignant reminder of the nearly unrelieved loneliness of the Great Plains, and of the solace and stimulation provided by literature.
Octavo. Original cloth in the dust jacket. In a red quarter morocco solander case. Edge of front pastedown scraped, else a fine copy in a very good dust jacket with some chips, tears and soiling.
