B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 4 32 "ONE OF THE GREAT FORCES IN 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN VERSE": FIRST EDITIONS OF WILLIAMS’ PATERSON, COMPLETE IN FIVE VOLUMES 32. WILLIAMS, William Carlos. Paterson. (New York): 1946-58. Five volumes. Octavo, original tan cloth, dust jackets. $3250 First editions of all five volumes of the American masterpiece by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet William Carlos Williams, including Book III, winner of the first National Book Award for Poetry, scarce complete. “One of the great forces in 20th-century American verse… Williams’ work is more expressive of American sensibility, and more saturated with American speech and its rhythms, than any poet’s since Whitman… He has entered the bloodstream of American poetry” (Hamilton, 584). In Paterson is found the embodiment of Williams’ belief that there are “no ideas but in things,” an epic weaving of clippings, local histories, letters and verse. To Robert Lowell, “Paterson is Whitman’s America grown pathetic and tragic, brutalized by inequality, disorganized by industrial chaos, and faced with annihilation. No poet has written of it with such a combination of brilliance, sympathy and experience, with such alertness and energy.” Intended as a work of four volumes, the fifth and concluding volume appeared only five years before Williams’ death in 1963. The first four volumes were each limited to 1000 copies. Connolly 100. Owner signature in Book 3; bookseller ticket in Book 4. Books with some soiling to cloth, mostly on Book 1; dust jackets with usual toning and a bit of soiling, tape repairs to verso on Books 1, 4 and 5. A very good set.
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