THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND

Los Angeles: Designed at Frank Wiggins Trade School, 1929. First Edition. Broadsheet (7" x 9 ½"), with the title and date on the recto and the poem on the verso. Printed on laid, watermarked paper, intended as a bifold. Clean, unmarked, and quite scarce.

This poem appears on page 127 of the Ward Ritchie bibliography, the third item in the list of "Books printed by Ward Ritchie before the formation of The Ward Ritchie Press in 1932" and before Ritchie's year abroad in Paris in the atelier of François-Louis Schmeid (1930). Writing much later in Laguna Verde Imprenta about his early attempts at poetry, Ritchie (1905-96) observed, "When I was much younger I was unsure of the value of my literary creations and rather than possibly being subjected to peer ridicule I used a variety of pseudonyms. I was later reminded of these when Occidental College unearthed an undergraduate piece I has written as Davie Dicker. This led to me recall some other I had used - James Beattie Pitwood, Betsey Ann Bristol, Peter Mallory and Peter Lum Quince."

Provenance: from the private collection of Allen K. Mears, the noted collector of Robinson Jeffers, fine press and illustrated books, and broadsides.