Flowering Judas

New York: Harcourt Brace, 1930. First edition. 8vo, faint purple stamp on pastedowns; tan paper covered boards, brown cloth spine stamped in darker brown; stamping rubbed away; custom quarter- morocco box. First edition, 600 copies printed. With Porter's ownership inscription on the rear endpaper: "Katherine Anne Porter, her copy - October 9, 1930 Mexico." Additionally inscribed on the front endpaper: "For my dear Hart Crane - | from Katherine Anne, with love. | October, 1930, Mexico D.F."

Porter was in New York, for at least a portion of the fall of 1930 as Hart Crane inscribed a copy of "The Bridge" to her in New York, shortly after its publication by Horace Liveright in March 1930. Porter's own first and most famous story was published at the same time, in the spring issue of The Hound and Horn. They became quite friendly as she remained there until returning to Mexico in October 1930. In April 1931, a new Guggenheim fellow, Crane excitedly departed for Mexico where Porter (who also held a Guggenheim fellowship,) had offered her hospitality in a large house in Mexico City, where she had spent much of her time. Crane arrived in April and by June of 1931 Crane's drunken antics - an often told story- had caused Porter to finally break with him. A letter in our possession, from Porter to literary scholar Vivian Pemberton, remarks "In the middle of September [1931] I took off for Europe on my Guggenheim Fellowship desperately happy to be out of that indescribably horrible mess that Siqueiros, a really dangerous man, and Crane, quite literally at that time an unendurable one, had made of my life and almost everyone else's around them.