EIMI ("I AM")

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Limited edition. Publisher's original yellow cloth with black lettering to spine and front panel, without the scarce dustwrapper. Fore-edge and lower edge rough-cut. An excellent near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth fresh with just a touch of darkening to the spine. The contents are clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. An attractive example.

Issued in a limited edition of 1381 copies, this example is numbered 344 and signed by the E. E. Cummings in black ink on the colophon page at the rear. The colophon reads "this, the first edition, printed from type, has been limited to 1381 copies; representing the number of orders received by [the publishers] up to February 15, 1933. The author joins with the publishers in congratulating S. A. Jacobs; who designed the format of 'EIMI', solved all technical problems connected with the typesetting and printing, and from start to finish personally supervised the book's production". The book, published on March 28, 1933. 'EIMI' and described by Richard Kennedy as "the most elaborate work [Cummings] ever wrote [...] a turning point in his life" is an unusual and ambitious hybrid: part travelogue (a diary of a thirty-six day journey from Paris to Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Constantinople and then, by the Orient Express, back to France), part autobiography, but also a work of imagination informed by the allegorical scheme of Dante's 'Commedia'. (Richard S. Kennedy, 'Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E. E. Cummings'; Firmage A13).