Shamrock Song; Printed for Albert M. Bender's St. Patrick's Day Party
San Francisco: The Grabhorn Press, 1939. Broadside (17 1/2 by 11 3/4 inches), printed letterpress, red initial capital, colophon statement in green, printer's device "L" in black; print area approx. 12 by 7 inches. Clean with only light toning around the perimeter, free of soiling or prior owner markings, colors bright; very light edgewear, short closed tear at the upper right-hand corner. A nearly fine copy. Item #1520
"SOFT IT CLOTHES THE RUINED FLOOR OF MANY AN ABBEY, GREY AND HOAR / AND THE STILL HOME OF THE DEAD / WITH ITS GREEN IS CARPETED"
Grabhorn Press broadside of Katharine Tynan's Shamrock Song—one of 100 copies printed by the Grabhorn Press for a St. Patrick's Day Party thrown by Albert Bender in March 1939. A lovely bit of Irish ephemera suitable for framing.
A native of Dublin, Bender lived in San Francisco where he was a devoted bibliophile and a noted patron of the arts. He was a prominent member of the Book Club of California, a founding member of the Roxburghe Club, and he aided many well-known artists in their careers, this being especially true of Ansel Adams, whose first published portfolio was financed by Bender. Bridging both the Catholic Literary Revival and the Celtic Twilight, Katharine Tynan was "on terms of close intimacy with Alice Meynell, Francis Thompson, Coventry Patmore, and Gerald Hopkins; one of her children had Louise Guiney and Lionel Johnson for godparents. She was in close association, too, with the Irish revivalists, especially with 'Willie Yeats' who was her particular friend" (Calvert Alexander). First collected in Shamrocks (1887), this poem contrasts the Rose and the Lily with the humble Shamrock, a badge of Irish national identity and an enduring symbol of the Trinity: "O the Red Rose shineth rare / and the Lily saintly fair / but my Shamrock, one in three / takes the inmost heart of me!" Grabhorn Press Bibliography, Miscellaneous 1934-1940,180; Calvert Alexander. The Catholic Literary Revival: Three Phases in its Development from 1845 to the Present.
Price: $200.00