“THE VERY BONES AND CLAY OF THE ACTUAL WORLD”: WALKER EVANS’ MESSAGE FROM THE INTERIOR, INSCRIBED TO POET RICHARD EBERHART

EVANS, Walker. Message from the Interior. New York: Eakins Press, (1966). Square folio, original gray cloth, mounted cover label. $9200.

First edition of Evans’ striking images of life in the American heartland, inscribed “To Dick and Betty Eberhart, with gratitude and much affection, from Walker, Hanover, Dec. 1972.” With 12 wonderful full-page photogravures.

“The photographs of Walker Evans reproduce the very bones and clay of the actual world… [They] persuade us that this is just what we would have seen, and understood, and recorded, had we been there” (John Szarkowski). Taken from 1931 to 1962, these photographs provide “emblems of home, possessions, and social status… for posterity’s sake” (Stepan, 72) and “pick up searing little spots of realism and underline them” (Parr & Badger, 114). Open Book, 220-21. See Roth, 17-22. The recipients of this copy are Pulitzer-Prize-winning Dartmouth poet-in-residence Richard Eberhart and his wife Betty.

Images fine. Only the lightest rubbing to extremities of original cloth. A fine inscribed copy, scarce with splendid association.