MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI by Harold Speakman With a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author.

Speakman, Harold [Harold Dunham Speakman], 1888-1928. Russell Lindsay Speakman [Frances Russell Lindsay Speakman], 1892-1988 (illustrator). William Alexander Percy, 1885-1942 (past owner).

Published by New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1927.

About this Item

First edition, first printing (not stated but per matching dates upon title and copyright pages) WITH TYPED LETTER SIGNED (TLS) BY THE AUTHOR TO MISSISSIPPI POET WILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY. [14], 360 pages plus unpaged plates. Hardcover: H 22cm x L 15cm. No dust jacket (i.e. lacking). Reddish-brown cloth rubbed with some blemishes; spine's gilt lettering all flaked off but still discernable; lesser flaking to front board's gilt stamping which otherwise remains reasonably bright; light scuffing/fraying and bumping to spine ends and board corners. Deckle fore-edge toned with some margins fractionally affected; slight soiling to bottom edge. Slight wrinkling to ffep caused by top half of TLS sheet glued to verso; interior foxing with strongest occurrences to plates and their adjacent pages. Personal bookplate of Greenville, Mississippi attorney and poet William Alexander Percy affixed to half-title verso. A few stress points at quires but binding otherwise remains firm. Now presented in a trimmed clear Dura-Lar (polyester film) sheet forming a dj which modestly enhances shelf presence. Typed letter has author's New York City address and dated "Sept. 22nd, 1927" at upper right followed by salutation "Dear Bill Percy" and five paragraphs (with one handwritten ink correction) explaining why author and illustrator did not include Percy's name on his portrait sketch (plate titled "Poet of the Delta" between pages 258-259) and extending best wishes and regards to Percy and his mother [Camille Bourges Percy, 1862-1929] while concluding with his ink signature "Harold Speakman." Per its second paragraph, the letter was presumably written in advance of the book's publication for a copy was not available for a personalized inscription ahead of Speakman's September 23rd departure for Mandalay. William Alexander Percy is profiled on pages 258-262 within a chapter titled "Color of the South." Married in July 1925, Harold and Russell recount their August 1926 to March 1927 river journey from Minnesota to New Orleans all before the Mississippi's peak flooding in April and May 1927 and ahead of Percy's appointment as chair of the Greenville Relief Committee. An extended illness led Speakman to commit suicide on September 24, 1928 just shy of the letter's first anniversary. Speakman's travel and medical circumstances certainly curtailed if not precluded signing events for MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI and, in the context of the river as protagonist, the Percy association is unassailable in significance. Book was acquired from a Greenville, Mississippi estate of a Walker Percy family descendant.

Seller Inventory # CMS-01507

Bibliographic Details

• Title: MOSTLY MISSISSIPPI by Harold Speakman With a number of drawings by Russell Lindsay Speakman and the author.
• Publisher: New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1927.
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Asia