“NO ONE HAS ENTERED MORE DEEPLY INTO THE HEART OF THE ODYSSEY THAN HE”: SIGNED LIMITED FIRST EDITION OF HOMER’S ODYSSEY ILLUSTRATED BY N.C. WYETH, 1929, ONE OF ONLY 550 COPIES SIGNED BY BOTH HIM AND TRANSLATOR GEORGE HERBERT PALMER, WITH ORIGINAL SEPARATE SUITE OF 16 COLOR PLATES

HOMER. The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by George Herbert Palmer. With Illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. Cambridge, [MA]: Houghton Mifflin, Riverside, 1929. Tall quarto, original half tan pigskin and gilt-stamped green cloth, brown morocco spine label, pictorial endpapers, uncut. WITH: Publisher's original envelope (measures 7-1/2 by 10-1/2 inches) with 16 color plates. Housed in publisher's original corresponding box with mounted printed label.

Signed limited first edition, number 423 of only 550 copies signed by renowned artist and illustrator N.C. Wyeth and translator George Herbert Palmer, containing 16 mounted color plates and original separate suite of 16 color plates, in the publisher’s corresponding box.

Homer's "Iliad and the Odyssey are the first perfect poetry of the western world" (PMM 31). This lavish edition of the Odyssey, masterfully translated by Harvard's George Herbert Palmer, boasts the wonderful illustrations of N.C. Wyeth. Alive with "richly colored and textured oils… Wyeth's compositions not only crackled with action… they made dramatic use of isolated figures, of light and shade, of odd arresting angles" (Silvey, 696). Wyeth spend ten years working on his paintings for this edition. "He made three false starts, destroying an entire set of canvases." Finally, with the aging Palmer in frail health and expressing his "dying wish was to see his great work illustrated by N.C. Wyeth… he dedicated himself to Palmer's Odyssey" (Michaelis, N.C. Wyeth, 316, 298). Palmer praised Wyeth's work, telling the publishers, "No one has entered more deeply into the heart of the Odyssey than he." Illustrated with 16 mounted color plates. Accompanied by original envelope containing a separate suite of plates from the book, loose as issued. Without original glassine. With original corresponding box. Precedes the same year's unsigned "deluxe" edition and first trade edition. Palmer's complete translation first published 1891 (his rendition of the poem's first dozen books appeared in 1884). Allen & Allen, 213.

Loose plates fine, bright and clean; book very nearly fine with light toning and soiling to spine, front cover gilt bright. Original box with printed label lightly toned, with expert restoration. A lovely, highly desirable copy of a beautiful production.