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(TRAVEL.) Literary archive of author Heath Bowman, including his Mexican collaborations with artist Stirling Dickinson. More than 200 leaves in one box, including typescripts, manuscripts, woodcut prints, and printed ephemera; generally minor wear. Various places, circa 1931-1941
The author Frederick Heath Bowman Jr. (1910-1993) was generally known as Heath Bowman. Born in Indiana, his family later moved to Evanston, IL, and he graduated from Princeton University in 1931. There he met woodcut illustrator Stirling Dickinson, and they spent six months together touring Mexico in 1934. Dickinson co-wrote and illustrated three books with Bowman on Latin America: "Mexican Odyssey" (1935), "Westward from Rio" (1936), and "Death is Incidental, a Story of Revolution" (1937). Dickinson remained to lead the American expat artist colony in San Miguel de Allende, where he was visited by Kerouac and other Beat Generation writers. Bowman returned to the United States. With his wife Jefferson he wrote "Crusoe's Island in the Caribbean" (1939), a history and travelogue on the island of Tobago. He published an historical novel called "All Your Born Days" (1939), and his final book was on his state of birth, "Hoosier: A Composite Portrait" (1941). In later years, Bowman was an international cultural affairs officer for the federal government, and spent his final years in Rome.
From Bowman's Mexican period, this lot includes: 51 small woodcut prints in various sizes and formats on Latin American themes, some or all by Stirling Dickinson; 16 colorful Mexican broadsides for movie theaters, the lottery and other subjects; Bowman's 1937 membership certificate in the Sociedad Amigos de San Miguel de Allende; his manuscript list of Mexican books on the verso of another author's book flier; 3 posters for "Mexican Odyssey" and "Westward from Rio" featuring Dickinson's artwork; and a 6-page typescript titled "Padre Francisco Hernandez's Story," possibly from "Death is Incidental."
This lot also contains material from several of Bowman's other projects--approximately 150 leaves of typescript and manuscript notes and drafts on Tobago and Indiana. A typescript short story is titled "The Wienie Roast." Some notes are typed out in a Beatnik-like stream of consciousness. A sheet titled "US Highways" reads in part "Minnows night or day . . . Oshkosh Caskets & Chairs: Rest for the Dead or the Living . . . Rat River . . . Goat Milk." Biographical notes are organized by year from 1919 to 1932 and similarly impressionistic. Extensive journal-like manuscript entries date from 1931 and 1932, long before he was widely published, and a typescript travelogue titled "Delaware Water Gap to Princeton" describes a trip in May 1931.
An interesting archive from an interesting travel writer and literary figure.
