STRANGE WATERS, by GEORGE STERLING.

SIGNED and INSCRIBED TWICE by GEORGE STERLING to GEORGE STEELE SEYMOUR the noted Chicago book collector who, with his wife Flora Warren Seymour, founded The Order of Bookfellows - a Chicago based literary society and small press publisher. In addition to being TWICE INSCRIBED by STERLING, the book has a number of the author's hand corrections.

The inscription on the title page reads: "Dear George: / Seriously, do you think there is any chance of getting this into our High Schools to supplant Evangeline? / Seriously, / George / San Francisco / Aug. 12, 1926." The second inscription is on the verso of the title page and reads: "For George Steele Seymour / from George Sterling."

No publisher or printed date, but the long inscription is dated August 12, 1926, which was just three and a half months before George Sterling committed Suicide. This was one of, if not the, last published work by George Sterling.

Booklet, paper wrappers (split at the spine fold and laid on loosely), 5.25x7.25 inches, ten numbered pages of text, plus title page and endpapers. The inner pages are string tied with a bow in the centerfold.

Condition: The front and rear wrappers are loose, they are toned especially at the margins; the inner pages are nice, lightly toned at the margins, otherwise tight, bright, clean and clear.

Though published near the end of his life, this is one of the more difficult Sterling items to find. Especially so with the humorous inscription; apparently he held on to his bohemian sense of humor until the end.

About George Sterling (from Wikipedia):

******George Sterling, b.1869 d.1926, was an American writer based in the San Francisco, California Bay Area and Carmel by the Sea. He was considered a prominent poet and playwright and proponent of Bohemianism during the first quarter of the twentieth century. His work was admired by writers as diverse as Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis.

In 1905 Sterling moved to Carmel by the Sea, California, an undeveloped coastal area, and soon established a settlement for like-minded Bohemian writers. Carmel had been discovered by Charles Warren Stoddard and others, but Sterling made it world famous.

Sterling joined the Bohemian Club and acted in their theatrical productions each summer at the Bohemian Grove. For the Grove play of 1907 the Club presented Sterling's "The Triumph of Bohemia".

Sterling carried a vial of cyanide for many years. In November 1926, Sterling used it while at his residence at the San Francisco Bohemian Club. Kevin Starr wrote that "When George Sterling's corpse was discovered in his room at the Bohemian Club... the golden age of San Francisco's bohemia had definitely come to a miserable end."******