Summer of Love (signed copy)

New York: The Baker & Taylor Company, 1911.

Presentation copy from the author's mother, also signed by the author lower down the page. First Edition. Original gray cloth board with gilt lettering to front and spine. Light wear to ends of the spine. Endpapers slightly darkened. A near fine copy. Presentation from the author's mother, Mrs Annie Ellen Kilburn Kilmer (1852-1932), with inscription on first free endpaper, "To Mr and Mrs Bailey from the Poet's Mother... New Brunswick, 23rd Sept, 1911". Further down the page Joyce Kilmer has signed his name. Annie Kilmer was buried in the Kilmer family plot at Elmwood Cemetery, New Brunswick, New Jersey, alongside her son, Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) who was killed in the first World War. He is best known for his poem 'Trees' published in the collection 'Trees and Other Poems' in 1914. He enlisted in the New York National Guard and was deployed to France with the 69th Infantry Regiment in 1917. He was killed by a sniper's bullet at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31. Joyce Kilmer Park in the Bronx, New York, near Yankee Stadium, is named for him.