Oscar Weil Letters and Papers

San Francisco: The Book Club of California [printed by The Grabhorn Press], 1923. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Very Good Plus. Lange, Dorothea; H. Von Schmidt. No. 136 of 400, quarto size, 140 pp. A tribute to Oscar Weil (1839-1921), born in New York and educated as a musician. When the Civil War started he enrolled in the Northern cause as a private and by the end of the war he was a Major; however, injuries received during the war meant he could no longer be a violinist. He therefore turned to composing, and settled in San Francisco where he also served as the music critic for the Argonaut newspaper; he was a man much loved by the community, as attested to by this memoir. Frontispiece a tipped-in photograph by Dorothea Lange from a painting of Oscar Weil by Olga M. Ackerman; when this photograph was taken, Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) was living in Berkeley, having recently married the western painter Maynard Dixon. Printed by the Grabhorn Press, the renowned publishers/printers Edwin and Robert Grabhorn.

___DESCRIPTION: Brown laid paper boards with a black cloth spine, red paper spine label with gold lettering and border, red paper label on the front board with gold lettering and decorative border over a slightly larger black pastedown, fore- and bottom edges uncut, plain endpapers, tissue-guarded frontispiece the photograph by Dorothea Lange of a painting of Oscar Weil as referred to above, title page in red and black, almost every page of text has red lettering for marginal notes and capital letters, some of which are blue; quarto size (approximately 11.5" tall), pagination: (i-xiv), (1)-119, blank (120), sectional title page "Compositions of Oscar Weil" (121), blank (122), 3 pp. of compositions (123-125), colophon page (126).

___CONDITION: Overall in near fine condition, with a strong, square text block, solid hinges, straight corners with no rubbing, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; there is a minor spot or two of soiling to the front board, some light rubbing to the paper label on the front board, a hint of rubbing to the head and tail of the spine, the corners are straight with some light rubbing, and the spine label is somewhat faded.

___CITATION: BCC 100 no. 19; Grabhorn Bibliography no. 58.

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