August 2021 Catalogue

Beautiful Original Watercolor Featuring A 1944 Presentation Inscription By Henry Miller 39. MILLER, Henry. Original watercolor. No place, 1944. One leaf, measuring 9 by 14 inches; matted and framed, entire piece measures 13 by 19 inches. $6200. Original watercolor of human figure standing in a town, featuring a presentation inscription: “For Cecilia Draeger from Henry Miller 1944.” Miller began painting watercolors in the 1920s and continued throughout his life. After spending years inEurope,MillermovedtoBigSur in1942,wherehe livedamodestexistence.Thiswatercolor, painted during the Big Sur years, depicts a person with a gentle facial expression and closed eyes with a town in the background and a blue sun overhead. Although Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn were published in Paris in the 1930s, it was not until the easing of censorship in the early 1960s that his work was published in the United States. Fine condition. Hannah More’s Famous Anti-Slavery Poem, Sorrows Of Yamba 40. MORE, Hannah and SMITH, Eaglesfield. The Sorrows of Yamba; Or, The Negro Woman’s Lamentation. To the Tune of Hosier’s Ghost. London, 1800. Broadside, pale gray wove stock, framed. $2200. Early broadside printing of More’s influential abolitionist poem, with a wood-engraved vignette picturing a slave being rescued by a cleric. “Beyond any doubt, Hannah More was the most influential female member of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade” (Carey). Samuel Johnson once called Hannah More “the most ‘powerful versificatrix in the English language” (DNB). “She did, perhaps, as much real good in her generation as any woman that has ever held the pen” (Allibone, 1361). The Sorrows of Yamba (traditionally ascribed to More) first appeared in the November 1795 issue of the Cheap Repository . Recent scholarship, however, suggests that a short form of the poemwas originally created by Eaglesfield Smith, to whichMore made additions. The provocative vignette was probably engraved after English cuts by John Bewick. Fine condition. Beautifully framed. F r a m e d ! 2 0 2 1 B a u m a n R a r e B o o k s 33 32