With letter from Jarrell to the book's designer, Harry Ford
The Woman at the Zoo: Poems & Translations.
New York: Atheneum, 1960.
Price: $1,200.00
About the item
First edition. 4pp. ANS; 65 pp. 8vo. With letter from Jarrell to the book's designer, Harry Ford. Navy blue boards with gilt lettering to spine, fine in dust jacket that has slight rubbing along spine on verso and at bottom corner on front, else a near fine copy. Manuscript letter from author in black ink on his stationary addressed to designer and editor Harry Ford laid in.
Item #339076
With signed letter of thanks addressed to Harry Ford (1919-1999), the book's designer, laid-in, reading in part: "I believe it's the preettiest of mine you've ever done — I couldn't like it better". Ford was a book designer for Alfred A. Knopf where he started working in 1947 and would inevitably become a senior poetry editor for Knopf in 1987. Although he was a designer it was his selective taste in poetry that led him to a 28-year stint at Atheneum, an imprint partially started by Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. where he edited poets like Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, Richard Wilbur, Howard Moss, W. S. Merwin, James Merrill, Mark Strand, Anthony Hecht, Mary Kinzie, George Bradley, Jill Bialosky, Edgar Bowers, and Randall Jarell.
