Sonnets for Caresse

Paris: Editions Narcisse, 1927. Fourth edition. Softcover. g. 30/44. Quarto. Unpaginated 36pp. Original plain wraps with tan stiff dustjacket with red and black lettering and frames on cover, red vignette and black frame on back cover. Title page printed in red and black. This fourth and last edition contains twenty-four sonnets with red initials printed to Japan paper with limitation page, numbered by hand at rear. The first edition contained 30, the second 37, and the third edition 48 poems. Dustjacket with some wear along edges, small chips and tears along spine and top edge of back cover. Reinforced with transparent tape at lower third of spine, rubbed. Six inch closed tear along top of inside flap of dustjacket, three inch closed tear at top of flap at back cover. Illustrated Ex-Libris on inside front cover with signature of owner James S. Furr. Note by Furr above Ex-Libris. Block age-toned. overall in good condition. Henry Crosby (1898-1929) was the heir to one of the richest Boston banking families. Profoundly affected by his experience in the American Field Service during World War I, he abandoned all pretense of living the expected life of a privileged Bostonian. With his wife Mary Phelps Jacob he moved to Paris, enjoying the decadent lifestyle of the period, Les années folles (Crazy Years), became friends with some of the most famous individuals, including Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Mary (Polly) took the name Caresse and together they founded the Black Sun Press, becoming part of the so-called "Lost Generation Writers" and the first to publish authors including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound.