Description
The first American edition of The Americans: Photographs by Robert Frank, published in 1959 in New York by Grove Press, with the publisher’s first state dust jacket.
Oblong octavo, [4], iv, [172pp]. Includes 83 black and white photographs printed in gravure. Publisher’s black cloth, title stamped in gilt on spine. Touch of wear to tips of spine, solid text block, free of notes or notable wear. In the publisher’s first state dust jacket, with illustration by Alfred Leslie on back panel, price clipped, chipping along edges, light soiling to covers, free of restoration.
(The Open Book, 176) (Andrew Roth, 150)
Robert Frank had difficulty finding an American publisher, so he turned to Robert Delpire of Paris, where Les Américains was released in 1958 as part of the Encyclopédie Essentielle series. Photographic descriptions by Simon de Beaver, Erskine Caldwell, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner were included in the French edition, but removed from this first American edition for their “un-American tone.” An introduction was written by Jack Kerouac and short, one-line descriptions were added for each photographic plate.
