Richardson, Joan

Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879-1923 [Review slip and Newsletter Laid-in]

New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover with Dust Jacket.

Drawing on letters, journals, and archival research, she traces the tensions between Stevens’s inward imaginative life and the outward demands of respectability and professional success that would shape both his character and his poetry.

No Flaws or Blemishes but minimal shelf handling; The dust jacket has the prince intact with mild spine fading. 9.5 inches tall; 591 pages with an index; Laid-in Publisher's review slip and newsletter. From the estate of Ben Raeburn, publisher of Horizon Books.

Wallace Stevens: The Early Years, 1879–1923 by Joan Richardson is the first volume of what is widely regarded as the definitive modern biography of Wallace Stevens. Focusing on his formative years—from childhood through his emergence as a serious poet—Richardson reconstructs Stevens’s intellectual development, family life, education, and early professional experiences. 

The book’s significance lies in its depth and authority. Richardson does not merely recount events; she explains how Stevens’s early encounters with philosophy, art, travel, and emotional restraint helped form the aesthetic and psychological foundations of one of the central poets of American modernism. This volume has become an essential reference for scholars and serious readers seeking to understand the origins of Stevens’s poetic worldview and remains foundational in Stevens studies.

Subjects: Wallace Stevens, American modernist poetry, literary modernism, poetic development, author biography, Literary biography, literary criticism, twentieth-century American literary studies.

Item #21375
ISBN: 0688054013

Price: $34.00