Alexander's bridge / by Willa Sibert Cather.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cather, Willa, 1873-1947.

Contributor:

Caroline F. Schimmel Collection of Women in the American Wilderness (University of Pennsylvania)

Schimmel, Caroline F., donor, associated name.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bridges--Design and construction--Fiction.

Bridges.

Married people--Fiction.

Married people.

Civil engineers.

Bridges--Design and construction.

Mistresses--Fiction.

Mistresses.

Civil engineers--Fiction.

Boston (Mass.)--Fiction.

Boston (Mass.).

London (England)--Fiction.

London (England).

Genre:

Fiction.

Psychological fiction.

Penn Provenance:

Schimmel, Caroline F. (donor) (Schimmel Collection copy)

Purdy, Theodore M., Jr. (autograph) (Schimmel Collection copy)

Physical Description:

iv unnumbered pages, 174 pages, 2 unnumbered pages ; 19 cm

Manufacture:

Cambridge : Riverside Press.

Place of Publication:

Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin Co., [1922]

Summary:

Engineer Bartley Alexander appears to have a happy life in Boston with a successful career and a beautiful wife. He has been commissioned to design the Moorlock Bridge in Canada, the most important project of his career. With the onset of middle age, however, he grows increasingly restless and discontented, so much so that while in London he recklessly reignites a love affair with the sweetheart of his youth, the Irish actress Hilda Borgoyne. Although the tryst allows Alexander to recapture an element that has been missing from his pedestrian life, the relationship torments his sense of morality and eventually proves disastrous. Alexander's Bridge explores the demands of Gilded Age society on the individual, as well as the capacity of the individual to violate his own standards of integrity.

Notes:

One of an issue of 270 copies printed by Houghton Mifflin in January 1922, "without date on title page, with conventionally arranged preliminaries, with colophon but without advertising leaves, and with 'low' corrected to 'blow' ... [on p. 74]. A two-leaf fold is inserted in the last gathering, leading to a new collational formula. These copies are bound in blue mesh cloth with gilt stamping and lack the 'S.' in Cather's name on cover and spine."--F.W. Link, "Textual essay" in Alexander's bridge (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), p. 252. (Not in Crane.)

Colophon on p. [176].

Collation: [1]-[10]⁸ [11]¹⁰.

Preliminaries: p. [i], half-title; p. [ii], blank; p. [iii], title page (without imprint date); p. [iv], copyright and publication statement.

Page 74, line 17 begins: blow ...

Dust jacket on cream paper printed in dark brown. Front cover: within a single-ruled border, an illustration by F. Graham Cootes (65 x 104 mm.) of Bartley Alexander and Hilda seated at a table above title ("ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE"), a short rule, and author's name ("BY WILLA S. CATHER"), followed by a long rule and a 13-line blurb (text begins: "Some six or eight years aog, Miss Cather's collection of short stories entitled 'A Troll Garden' ..."). Back cover: list of 14 titles headed "NEW FICTION" beginning with Samuel Hopkins Adams's Success and ending with Georgette Heyer's The black moth (all published in 1921 or 1922). Front flap: excerpts from 5 reviews headed "HAVE YOU 'DISCOVERED' WILLA SIBERT CATHER?" and concluding with a list of 4 "Books by Miss Cather" (My Ántonia, The song of the lark, O pioneers! and Alexander's bridge). Back flap: 31-line blurb headed "MY ÁNTONIA By Willa Sibert Cather" and followed by text "With illustrations by Benda."

Local Notes:

Presented to the Penn Libraries in 2014 by Caroline F. Schimmel.

Schimmel Collection copy has partially effaced dated 20th-century autograph ("THEODORE M. PURDY, JR. 1924") of editor and publisher Theodore M. Purdy, Jr. (1903-1979) at head of front free endpaper.

Schimmel Collection copy has paper slip with bookseller's printed description (of this copy?) laid in; bookseller's notes in pencil on front free endpaper.

Schimmel Collection copy: dust jacket retained.

OCLC:

709222