[Signed] The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings (association copy) Brautigan, Richard [Russell Chatham] [Near Fine] [Hardcover]

An association copy: One of 10 deluxe copies in full maroon leather and numbered I-X of a total of seventy-five copies. Signed by Keith Abbott, who writes the five-page introduction, on the colophon which is numbered VI. Housed in a custom maroon leather clamshell box with a plate on the inside that reads ""This copy given to Russ Chatham in memory of his friend Richard Brautigan by Rod King and Vincenne Buonpane, March 2002."" The plate is signed by both of the gift-givers, ""Rod"" and ""Vincenne."" Chatham was indeed a good friend of Brautigan. He spent the majority of his career outside of Livingston, MT, and recruited/inspired others in the ""Montana Gang"" to the area including Brautigan, Thomas McGuane, and another good friend Jim Harrison, who used Chatham's paintings on the covers of most of his books. Chatham was extraordinarily successful at the height of his career (his largest paintings sold for $1 million to celebrities), and his paintings remain iconic images of the Montana landscape and perhaps the Interior West at large. See this great and wandering tribute from Rick Bassin Angler's Journal. Chatham was also a talented writer, best known for his iconic workThe Angler's Coast, and he was the publisher of Clark City Press, which published more than three dozen books including some of his own as well as books by Jim Harrison, Rick Bass, and others. Brautigan wrote these poems before the age of 21 and left them in 1955 with Edna Webster, the mother of his friend and first ""real"" girlfriend, in Eugene as he moved to San Francisco, a transition that would lead to his great fame. This limited edition was published the same year as the first trade edition, a Mariner paperback. A near fine copy with a shallow one-inch, narrow impression on the cover and slight bowing to the front board. Lacking a broadside it was issued with. The clamshell is near fine with some minor streaks of rubbing to the ribbed spine. A tender association copy.