?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
Powell, Dawn (1896-1965) Six Titles, Most First Editions, Two Signed.
1) Dance Night. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1930. First edition with unclipped jacket, octavo; original orange publisher's cloth stamped with black; top edge tinted black, uncut; 7 5/8 x 5 ¼ in.
2) Angels on Toast. New York: Charles Scriber's Sons, 1940. First edition, octavo, with "A" below the copyright notice; original beige publisher's cloth stamped with pink; in an unclipped jacket; 8 x 5 3/8 in.
3) A Time to be Born. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942. Likely second edition, octavo, without the "A"; original blue publisher's cloth stamped with yellow; in unclipped jacket; 8 x 5 ½ in.
4) My House is Far Away. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944. First edition, octavo, publisher's cloth stamped with blue; in the unclipped dust jacket; 7 5/8 x 5 1/2 in.
5) The Locusts Have No King. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948. First edition, octavo, signed by Powell in ink on front free flyleaf; original green publisher's cloth stamped with white and black, top edge tinted; with the unclipped pictorial dust jacket; 8 x 5 1/4 in.
6) Sunday, Monday, and Always. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952. First edition, octavo, inscribed by Powell: "For George, love Dawn" in ink on the front free flyleaf; original publishers sage cloth backed yellow boards, spine stamped with yellow; with the original unclipped dust jacket designed by William Barss; 8 1/8 x 5 1/4 in. (6)
Powell's witty and biting satiric tone garnered her praise and many awards in the 1960s. In the 1970s, Powell's work slipped into relative obscurity, only to be rediscovered around 1987. In that year, Gore Vidal wrote an essay in praise of her unique voice. "She needs no interpretation and in her lifetime she should have been as widely read as, say, Hemingway or the early Fitzgerald or the mid O'Hara or even the late, far too late, Katherine Anne Porter. But Powell was that unthinkable monster, a witty woman who felt no obligation to make a single, much less a final, down payment on Love or The Family; she saw life with a bright Petronian neutrality, and every host at life's feast was a potential Trimalchio to be sent up." (Quoted from Vidal's essay, "Dawn Powell, the American Writer.")
Property from the Estate of Michael Feingold (1945-2022).
