Songs of a Pagan

Item Details

Caldwell, ID., The Caxton Printers, 1949

INSCRIBED by the author in year of publication "For grace and courage in this human life...Grant us the beauty men have found through strife. Miriam* with love, from Anne. 1949". 4to. 90 pp. Includes a frontispiece tribute by Alfred Stieglitz recognizing Brigman as one of America's distinguished photographers. Publisher's brown buckram stamped in silver and black. Scraping along center of spine; wear to lower front corner; else a near fine copy.

Anne Wardrope Brigman (1869 – 1950) was an American photographer and one of the original members of Alfred Stieglitz's Photo-Secession movement in America. Her most famous images were taken between 1900 and 1920 and depict nude women dramatically situated in natural landscapes or trees. In the mid-1930s, she also began taking creative writing classes and writing poetry. "Songs of a Pagan" is her only published book of poetry and the culmination of her lifelong artistic vision. Issued just one year before her death, the volume combines 38 original poems with 38 of her celebrated photographs, uniting word and image in an expression of her deeply personal philosophy of nature, spirituality, freedom, and the human spirit.

*Miriam was likely one of the women who shared Brigman's inner world of poetry, spirit, and quiet companionship in Long Beach.