Description

Description: This 4-page narrative ballad begins: “There was one man and he was not an Irishman but he might have been with all his lying thieving ways. . . .”  The ballad was published in American Abroad: An Anthology (The Hague, Servire Press, 1932). The ballad is typed double spaced on four sheets of 11” x 8 ½” onionskin paper and is signed in full in black ink.

Robert Carlton Brown (1886-1959) was a visionary, avant-garde, writer, editor, and publisher. In his famous tome, “The Readies,” he set out to revolutionize reading as a visual experience, advocating for the invention of a hypothetical reading machine that could keep up with the visual media of cinema. He is attributed with poetic visual analogs, such as em dashes, and creating a “cinemovietone” shorthand system. In France, he was part of the expatriate avant-garde group that included Gertrude Stein, Kay Boyle and Nancy Cunard.

Kay Boyle (1902-1992) was an American Modernist writer and a political activist who championed civil rights and spoke against the Vietnam War. She wrote more than 40 volumes of influential works of fiction, short fiction, poetry, and children’s stories. Her stories were also widely published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The Saturday Evening Post. She won the O. Henry Award for short fiction twice. She also taught at several American universities and colleges after her return from France in 1941.

Item #A01538

Condition: The typescript is in excellent condition with a large bold signature.