THE BOOK OF JADE. New York: Doxey's At the Sign of the Lark, [1901]. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 7-131 [132: blank], original pictorial black cloth, front panel stamped in red and yellow, spine panel stamped in yellow, t.e.g., other edges untrimmed. First edition. The author's first and only book, published anonymously a few weeks prior to the author's fatal heart attack at age twenty-three. Limited to 600 numbered copies. The book was dedicated "To the Memory of Charles Baudelaire." "Of the 59 poems in the book, about a dozen are worth salvaging. When contrasted with the best, the worst are really bad. One poem, 'Danse Macabre,' is in such atrociously bad taste that it was finally omitted from the book, probably at the insistence of the publisher. It exists now only in a clipping taken from galley proofs. But our chief interest is the good poems. And the good ones reveal an undeniable lyric gift, a pure melancholy which reminds us of Dowson, a perverse and near-perfect despair which faintly recalls Les Fleurs du mal ... Barnitz remains, with his scant handful of successful poems, as America's only 'Yellow Nineties' poet. He possessed, indisputably, 'the point of view.'" - Joseph Payne Brennan, "David Park Barnitz, America's 'Yellow Nineties' Poet," Fresco, 9 (Summer 1959), 14-19. Cloth rubbed at spine ends and corner tips, a very good copy. This very scarce, obscure collection of Decadent poetry was reprinted in an edition of 300 copies by Durtro Press in 1998. (#165855).
Price: $1,250.00
"This edition is limited to six hundred copies, / of which this is No. ___" on copyright page.