VARIANT STATE OF ‘STARS’
Stars.
[Pasadena]: The Flame Press [Printed by Harry Ward Ritchie], 1930.
Price: $3,500.00
About the item
First edition, one of 80 copies printed, advance (unbound) state, without the separately printed errata sheet. Text printed on rectos only, on a single sheet of paper watermarked P Miliani Fabriano. [8] pp. 1 vols. 16mo. VARIANT STATE OF ‘STARS’. Stitched. A near fine, untrimmed copy. Alberts 62; Bloomfield A11.
Item #338427
An unrecorded variant state, stitched and unbound. Famously, only a very small number of copies of the first edition escaped into the wild (Alberts says 6, but perhaps as many as 15) before the printing was scrapped and a corrected second edition was issued in an edition of 110 copies.
Pagination as follows:
pp. [i/ii, iii/iv (2 blank preliminary leaves, wove paper)], [1/2, 3/4(unopened folded leaves on hand-made paper)] [5 - 8 (unopened folded leaves on hand-made paper)] (consisting of eight unnumbered leaves: title page/ blank verso, first page of poem/ blank verso, second page of poem (headed 'II')/ blank verso, colophon leaf (stating "... Eighty copies printed..." / blank verso), [v/vi, vii/viii (2 blank final leaves)].
The text is printed on rectos only upon a single folded sheet, here untrimmed and unopened, with two blank leaves of wove paper before and after the printed text, sewn with white thread and with binder’s mull present; lacking the errata slip noted by bibliographer. Bloomfield cites a single (variant) advance state of this publication, measuring 4 3/4 by 7 inches and with fewer preliminary pages, in the bibliographer's personal collection. Harvard reports a proof copy with errata sheet (Houghton Library GEN *57-1363 ); UNC reports two copies, one of which is unbound.
