Song

Frederic PROKOSCH

Published by Stockholm: [published by the author], 1943

About this Item

Marbled wrappers, 135 x 93mm, printed paper label. Edition limited to 44 copies, 22 on hand-made paper for the author's "friends in Sweden", Christmas 1943, 22 "on air-mail paper for his friends overseas", this one of the latter and inscribed by the author, "Best wishes to Eddie from Freddie". "Pears from the boughs hung golden, / The street lay still and cool, / Children with books and satchels / Came sauntering home from school . . ." Frederic Prokosch is remembered not for his novels such as The Asiatics (1935) but for the ante-dated forgeries that he had printed, purporting to be from the 1930s, of poems by distinguished writers of his acquaintance. In The Butterfly Books (1987) Nicolas Barker gives a careful account of the detective work he undertook to uncover the man who "had a real talent as a writer, if a small one, but a unique place in the history of forgery". Prokosch's "Butterfly Books" originated in poetry pamphlets, by himself, that he had printed at Yale in 1932 and that then became a Christmas series. In 1943 he had been posted by the US Office of War Information to Stockholm; his Christmas contribution that year, Song (mistitled So Long by Barker), was apparently printed at Albert Bonniers' printing house in the city. Seller Inventory # 31M100281

Bibliographic Details

Title: Song

Publisher: Stockholm: [published by the author]

Publication Date: 1943

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Fine

Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition