Adam's Works on Paper Art & Literature 12th March 2019

29 www.adams.ie Works on Paper 12 th March 2019 54 FOR WALTER LOWENFELS, SAMUEL BECKETT. WHOROSCOPE. Hours Press, Paris 1930, stapled, loose in red wrappers (a little scuffed and soiled). One of 300 copies, 100 signed, this copy signed ‘for Walter Lowenfels’, with Beckett’s signature, the dedica- tion not in Beckett’s hand. Without the white prize wrapper which is sometimes attached. Small neat puncture passing right through the work, not passing through any letter. Beckett’s first separately published work, a poem written in great haste for a prize of £10 (which it won) offered by Nancy Cunard’s Hours Press. Walter Lowenfels [1897-1976] was an American poet, journalist and editor and an active Com- munist. His papers are in Yale. He lived in Paris in the 1930s, and the Hours Press published an anthology (Henry Music) containing poems by Lowenfels, Beckett and Cunard among others. The dedication in this work may be in Cunard’s hand. Cunard, heir to the shipping fortune, cut a wide swathe through Paris in the inter-war years, including a brief liaison with Beckett. A legendary scarcity, signed and in reasonable condition, and a superb association copy, redo- lent of the revolutionary atmosphere of 1930s Paris. € 2,000 - 3,000 THE COLLECTION OF PROF. EOIN O’BRIEN.