STORM AT CASTELFRANCO

First edition, first printing. One of 15 'special' copies, signed by the author and with an original drawing by Larry Rivers. Hardcover. Publisher's original red and white feathered paper-covered boards, black cloth spine with titles in silver. With a fine, signed, full page pencil drawing by Larry Rivers tipped in as a frontispiece. Emendations by the author in ink on pages 30 and 42. A very good or better copy, the binding firm with some bumping to the lower corners, otherwise bright and fresh. The contents, with some faint marking from the publisher's glue used to tip in the frontispiece, and the authorial emendations, are otherwise clean throughout.

Issued in this 'special edition' of just 15 hardcover copies, each numbered and signed by Chester Kallman and with an original drawing by Larry Rivers tipped in. The present example is numbered 8. The first of three poetry collections by Chester Kallman (1921-1975), American poet, librettist, translator, and lifelong partner of W. H. Auden with whom he collaborated on libretto translations for Igor Stravinsky and other composers, notably The Magic Flute (1956) and Don Giovanni (1961). Painter, sculptor and jazz musician Larry Rivers (1923-2002), an enfant terrible of the New York School, was one of the most brash and brilliant figures of the post-war American art-world. Considered by many scholars to be the 'Godfather' of Pop Art, he was one of the first artists to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction. He was a friend of Kallman and Auden and at the time of this publication (and for several years either side) lived in the same building at 77 St. Marks Place in the East Village.