LOUIS UNTERMEYER (editor). American Poetry From the Beginning to Whitman, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931.

Octavo, first edition, pp. xxvi, 827, blue cloth boards with gilt lettering to spine and a blind-stamped tree on front, bookplate of the naval captain and author Frank Lester Pleadwell on front pastedown, partially obscured under the book label of Laura Mell Pleadwell. Facing the bookplate is a partly bound-in TLS from Untermeyer, acknowledging Pleadwell's criticism and praise of the Untermeyer book, and concluding with a friendly hand-written postscript. An interesting private exchange between two early-American poetry experts. There are a few pages of notes laid in, probably Pleadwell's but that is speculation.