The Mirrored Walls And Other Poems

New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970. 131pp. Green cloth boards, gilt titles on spine. Clean and tight, internally and externally. Dust jacket slightly toned at extremities, but crisp and not price clipped. With multiple typescript poems and a letter laid in. Book signed and inscribed to Dr. Martin Gilbert with appreciation, and dated March 1989. Press release laid in. Letter to Gilbert dated March 18, 1989 also laid in, along with three typed poems (Christmas Eve, Art Snow Christmas Eve, and Christmas 1988), two with small drawings by her sister in the margins. In the letter, she thanks Gilbert for his letter and his interest in her poems. She’s given up submitting poems, she notes, due to changes in taste and mastheads, and has begun to “let them pile up in my drawer and send copies to the few friends I still have living.” She goes on to say that she’s “been a recluse” since her sister’s death in 1986, “living in the past and writing a novel about it.” The Mirrored Walls was the last collection Mullins published, and by the time of Gilbert’s letter, almost two decades had passed. Two additional typescript poems (Poem to TS Eliot and Cooperation with the Weather) signed to Gilbert with appreciation. Separate, unmarked typescript of a poem called Joe Kling, after the famous New York bohemian and author of Eighth Street. Two small reviews of The Mirrored Walls laid in, as well. Mullins found some regard for her poems in the 20s and 30s, publishing them regularly in magazines and newspapers. Her work appeared in the poet and critic Louis Untermeyer’s anthology Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology. Mullins was struck by a car in 1935, was in a coma for a time and took a number of years to recover. Her career never regained momentum in later years, and by the time of the correspondence included with this book, she’d given up on re-establishing herself in the literary world.. Signed and Inscribed. First American Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good. Octavo.