Always the Young Strangers

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1953. Hardcover. 8vo. Green cloth with silver lettering, pictorial dust jacket. 445pp. Pictorial endpapers. Very good/very good. Mild jacket edgewear, with tiny chips at head of spine, which is faintly sunned. A tight, handsome later printing of this evocative memoir of the Illinois poet and Lincoln biographer's early years in and around small town Galesburg, Illinois. On the half-title page, he boldly inscribes and signs: "Henry Slade / 1953 / Carl Sandburg" in his usual thick black ink. Laid into this copy are three choice promotional items: 1) "A Sampler from the Forthcoming Book Always the Young Strangers," a pristine copy of this 29-page 8vo pamphlet with glossy pictorial outer wrappers; 2) a small 4to pictorial trifold leaflet for the Book-of-the-Month Club printing, very good; 3) an 8½" X 6" mimeographed "For Immediate Release" statement dated 30 December 1952 on Harcourt, Brace News red letterhead announcing the January 6 publication of this book, stapled to (as issued) an 8½" X 11" mimeographed "Proclamation by Governor Adlai E. Stevenson" announcing a 75th birthday dinner for Sandburg at Chicago's Blackstone Hotel and naming this date "Carl Sandburg Day." Last but far from least is a pristine printed invitation to this very birthday bash, a wide 12mo 4-page affair handsomely printed on cream stock, the inner left side the "Sponsoring Committee" (a "Who's Who" of Lincoln and Chicago literary figures) and the right side the place and times. A lovely inscribed copy accompanied by a tremendous trio of scarce promotional items and scarcer invitation.