Cather's First Book
April Twilights. Poems by Willa Sibert Cather.
Boston: Richard G. Badger / The Gorham Press, 1903.
Price: $1,000.00
About the item
First Edition. 52 pp. 1 vols. 12mo. Cather's First Book. Original drab boards, printed paper labels on front cover (with closed tear) and spine (a trifle chipped), some minor soiling; ffep with chip along bottom edge. Crane A1.a, Seven Gables, First Books 53.
Item #338692
First edition of the author’s first book, and apart from the author’s revised edition which she published in 1923, her only collection of verse. Cather’s attitutde towards her early poems changed over the following years, and when it was republished in 1923, many of the poems were not reprinted. Badger’s Gorham Press was essentially a vanity operation, where authors paid the expenses of publication. As a matter of fact, in 1908, Cather purchased the remaining copies from the publisher and destroyed them.
