Potato Face, signed by Sandburg.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930. First edition. Hardcover. This is a signed and jacketed first edition, first printing of Pulitzer prize-winning poet and biographer Carl Sandburg’s collection of twelve children’s stories. This copy is scarce thus, very good plus in a good dust jacket. The binding – quarter yellow cloth with dark green cloth boards – is square, tight, bright, clean, and sharp-cornered. We note only mild shelf wear to the bottom edge and a touch of sunning to the extreme top and bottom edges where a little dust and sun got past the dust jacket. The contents are bright and clean with a crisp, unread feel. We find no soiling or spotting, just a little dust to the top edges of the text block and a cosmetic split starting at the pp.48-49 gutter, which slightly exposes the intact mull beneath but does not affect binding integrity. Sandburg’s signature “Carl Sandburg” is inked in black fountain pen on the half title recto. The yellow dust jacket, printed in green and black, is substantially complete, with only minor loss at the spine ends and flap fold corners, but fully split along the front joint. The split nearly disappears beneath the clear, removable, archival cover. Old small strips of dark tape reinforcement to the jacket verso at the spine ends and a few extremities show dark where there are small jacket losses. The jacket spine is modestly soiled, with small chips and closed tears to the spine ends.
The stories herein are built around the titular character, “Potato Face Blind Man,” a storyteller and philosopher who previously appeared in Sandburg’s Rootabaga children’s books – Rootabaga Stories (1922), Rootabaga Pigeons (1923), and Rootabaga Country (1929). “In the biggest village of the Rootabaga country, the Potato Face Blind Man sits with his accordion on the corner nearest the post office. Sometimes he finds in himself the whole human procession and what he sees and hears is in these stories.”
Before the First World War, Sandburg had begun “inventing zany, sometimes poignant American fairy tales for his children. Two events influenced him to develop those stories into a book: the First World War and the ensuing economic, political, and racial strife left him profoundly disillusioned, and then his eldest daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy, for which there was as yet no seizure-suppressing medication. From that global and personal misery sprang a series of delightful storybooks for young people.”
By the time Potato Face was published, “half a dozen of Sandburg’s earlier Rootabaga stories [were] already in school readers.” Sandburg also wrote two books of poems for children, Early Moon (1930) and Wind Song (1960).
America’s 20th century proletarian troubadour poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) defied easy categorization. “The poet of the American vernacular was not only a tough, gregarious reporter, but a rollicking folk musician”. He wrote children’s books, worked as a Social-Democratic Party political organizer and aide, and became both a Hollywood advisor and State Department emissary. He was likely the only Pulitzer Prize winner to have been a bona fide, incarcerated, rail-hopping hobo, and remains the only Pulitzer Prize winner to have won awards for both Poetry and History. “Sandburg spoke to and for the American Century in which he lived and did his work.”
In addition to his Pulitzers (1919, 1940, 1951, one of these for his acclaimed biography of Abraham Lincoln), Sandburg’s long catalogue of accolades included the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964), the Robert Frost Medal (1952) for lifetime achievement in poetry, election to the American Society of Arts and Letters, a bevy of honorary doctorates, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (1952), and an invitation to address a joint session of Congress (in 1959, for Lincoln’s 150th birthday). Sandburg’s 1967 own memorial ceremony was held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
References: Heise, The Sandburg Shelf; ANB. Item #008549
Price: $550.00