Santa Fe, Privately printed, N.d. [1921]

8vo, 4 unbound folded sheets housed in printed wrappers, title and translators' names to front panel. Leading edge uncut. Light wear and chipping to (outsize) wrappers, a little age-toning, but a well preserved copy.

First edition of the first book by Yvor Winters [1900-1968] -- and the only book by John Gaw Meem [1894-1983]. Published in an edition of about 50 copies, and containing four sonnets by Pierre de Ronsard [1524-1585] translated from the French by Winters, and two sonnets and two fragments by the Brazilian Olavo Bilac [1865-1918], translated from the Portuguese by John Gaw Meem. The title is a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem Days ('Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days [...] Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.').

As a young man, Chicago-born Winters spent two years at the Sunmount Sanatorium in Santa Fe, New Mexico, being treated for tuberculosis. There he met John Gaw Meem, who had contracted tuberculosis in Brazil. While fellow patients, the pair produced this slim volume, printed at the office of the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper, in an edition of no more than fifty copies to be distributed to family and friends. Both men recovered their health. Winters trained on as a writer, becoming a prominent poet and literary critic from his lifelong base at Stanford University. Meem left books behind him, settled in New Mexico, and became one of the state's most important and influential architects, a leading exponent of the Pueblo Revival style.

In retrospect, a touching collaboration between two young men whose later lives would take very different paths. And extremely scarce: Library Hub locates no copy in any UK institution.