Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 285

Price Realized: $ 2,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION. Complete set of the WPA state guides. 50 volumes (the 48 states plus the territory of Alaska and Washington, DC) plus one duplicate. 8vo, original cloth, various conditions; 12 with original dust jackets. Various places, 1937-50 and 1958
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John Steinbeck, upon departing in 1960 on the cross-country trip described in his Travels with Charley, wrote "If there had been room . . . I would have packed the W.P.A. Guides to the States, all forty-eight volumes of them. . . . The complete set comprises the most comprehensive account of the United States ever got together, and nothing since has even approached it."

32 of the volumes in this set have folding maps laid in or tucked into the rear pockets, while most of the others were issued with maps as plates or on the endpapers. 5 volumes are lacking their original folding maps (Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). The volumes are not in bibliophilic condition, and are a mix of editions, 32 of them being first editions, and all but the Arkansas volume published by 1950. The volumes are almost uniform in height and fairly uniform in thickness (the lone exceptions being the slightly taller Idaho first edition and the similarly tall 1141-page District of Columbia doorstop).