HOWL: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated By Author, With Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography.
New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1986. 28.5x23.5cm: 194pp. Stated First Edition, First Printing. Brown cloth boards with a circular design blindstamped to the front board and gold lettering on the spine. A straight, square, and tight copy that appears unread. Scattered foxing along text block edges. Blue dust jacket bright with a hint of toning and spotting on the inside. Small dampstain to bottom of rear dust jacket panel, causing some discoloration on the inside, though not visible from the outside. Near Fine in a Near Fine dust jacket.
This copy belonged to Doris Grumbach, with her signature at the bottom of the front free endpaper. Allen Ginsberg INSCRIBED and SIGNED this copy to Grumbach in February 1988 with a large drawing of a Buddha above a small skull and his signature ‘AH’ on the page listing his publications. Laid in is a promotional card addressed to Grumbach for a Raphael Soyer book that features his drawing of Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg on the verso. The promotional card has been SIGNED by Ginsberg below the image.
Doris Grumbach is a highly regarded American feminist writer who explored gay and lesbian themes during a time when it was not exactly popular to do so. Perhaps that is how Ginsberg and Grumbach connected. According to literary critic Ann Cothran, Grumbach’s “most important contribution to gay and lesbian literature is the manner in which she consistently represents homosexual relationships matter of factly, as an integral part of the human landscape. Grumbach depicts lesbianism as a positive, life-giving force in women's lives.”
Finally, Grumbach has a loose association with our friends over at Capitol Hill Books in Washington D.C. In the 1980s, Grumbach and her partner, Sybil Pike, opened a bookstore for rare and used books, Wayward Books, in the Capitol Hill section of Washington D.C. The bookstore was a success but the couple closed the shop in 1990 and moved it to a new location in Maine. Bill Kerr, founder of Capitol Hill Books, worked with Grumbach at her shop. According to Capitol Hill Books lore, Kerr would take his pay in books and when Wayward closed, he opened Capitol Hill Books in 1991.
Source: Summers, C. J. (editor). The Gay & Lesbian Literary Heritage: A Reader’s Companion to the Writers and Their Works, From Antiquity to the Present. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Price: $1,200.00
Item #10143