For Whispers & Chants

San Francisco: The Lantern Press [printed by the Grabhorn Press], 1927. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Very Good Plus. Angelo, Valenti. No. 203 of 500, quarto size, 29 pp. "For Whispers & Chants" is a collection of poems by influential Los Angeles bookseller and poet Jake Zeitlin (1902-1987), who worked as a rare books dealer for sixty years, co-founded the Rounce & Coffin Club, and started his own fine press, the Primavera Press. The poems whisper of the southwest, and indeed, the volume is dedicated "To Texas, great treasure-cache of poems and legends". Zeitlin had, at the time of this publication, seen himself as a poet, in the tradition of Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost; this volume "was greeted in Los Angeles as the harbinger of a poetic career about to skyrocket" (n.b., Starr, "Material Dreams", see below).

This publication by the Grabhorn Press was listed as one of the Fifty Books of the year, and includes a frontispiece by Valenti Angelo (1897-1982), a highly regarded designer, illuminator, and decorator of books over a career that spanned decades, doing much of his early work for the Grabhorn Press and the Book Club of California.

___DESCRIPTION: Full yellow paper, red lettering and decoration inside blue ruled borders on the front board, brown lettering on the spine, fore- and bottom edges uncut, coloured frontispiece by Valenti Angelo, title page with printer's device; Goudy Modern type, Ingres paper, quarto size (10.25" by 6.75"), pagination: [i-viii] [1] 2-20 [1 colophon], one of 500 copies, this number 203.

___CONDITION: Volume is very good plus, with a strong, square text block with solid hinges, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; light soiling to the boards, some minute rubbing to the corners, the head and tail of the spine, the paper covering along the front joint just beginning to crack, and with some off-setting to the endpapers.

___CITATION: Grabhorn Press Bibliography, no. 96; Kevin Starr, "Material Dreams, Southern California Through the 1920s", p. 326.

___POSTAGE:  International customers, please note that additional postage may apply as the standard does not always cover costs; please inquire for details.

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