Blackberry Winter: A Story Illustrated by Wightman Williams.

WARREN, Robert Penn.

Item Number: 144817

Cummington, Massachusetts: The Cummington Press, July 1946.

Signed limited edition of the author’s highly acclaimed short story. Octavo, original publisher’s quarter leather over paper-covered boards, illustrated by Wightman Williams. One of three hundred thirty copies signed by the author and illustrator on the colophon, this is number thirty one. In good condition.

The novelette Blackberry Winter was originally published separately in 1946 and subsequently collected in Robert Penn Warren’s first and only volume of short stories, The Circus in the Attic, initially published in 1947. Blackberry Winter is widely believed to be Penn’s finest work of short fiction. It has been included in many anthologies and has garnered the interest of critics and readers. Since its first publication, critics have noted Warren’s deft evocation of the textures and rhythms of rural Tennessee and his ear for dialogue. One of the reasons for the story’s popularity is the universal appeal of the narrator, whose boyhood innocence is as convincing as his adult ambivalence and restlessness.