The Enormous Room
$6,500 · Offered by Biblio
First edition · Signed
New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922 First edition, first state with shit present on p. 219. Association copy, signed and inscribed by Cummings to editor Malcolm Cowley on front free endpaper: To Malcolm Cowley / (qui?) / E. E. Cummings. Publisher s mustard yellow cloth, lettered in black. Very good book with light toning to spine and pages, light rubbing to spine and tail edge of boards and text block, previous owner s bookplate (book collector H. Bradley Martin) to front pastedown. Overall, an attractive copy with an excellent association. The Enormous Room is an autobiographical novel that details E.E. Cummings time in a French prison during World War I. Serving as an ambulance driver, Cummings and his friend William Slater Brown, named B in the book, expressed anti-war sentiments while they were enlisted. Cummings himself proclaimed to have had no ill will towards the Germans they were fighting against. The pair also preferred the company of the French to their American peers; this behavior garnered negative attention and landed the two in prison under suspicion of espionage. The book describes their time imprisoned in an enormous room with thirty other people. The title refers to both the physical space Cummings was held captive in and the place in his mind where his memories of the event live. This copy is inscribed by E. E. Cummings to Malcolm Cowley, an important editor and literary critic; both men are strongly associated with the group of World War I-influenced Americ
- Publisher: New York: Boni and Liveright
- Year: 1922
- Edition: First Edition
- Printing: first
- Binding: hardcover
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