Highlights of the Renee and Theodore Weiss Collection
The Theodore and Renee Weiss Library
The auction of rare works of 20th century poetry and fiction is live at the FITZ Ebay store here. The auction runs through Saturday, October 8th.
Highlights of the auction, drawn from the library of eminent literary critics Ted and Renee Weiss, include signed works by John Ashbery, Lawrence Durrell, Seamus Heaney, Jerzy Kosinski, Denise Levertov, James Merrill, Paul Muldoon, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Pinsky, Kenneth Rexroth, Gore Vidal and Eudora Welty as well as First Editions by William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop, Hannah Arendt, E.E. Cummings, Herman Hesse, W.S. Merwin, Wallace Stevens, Tennessee Williams. and many others.
Visit the FITZ Ebay store for pictures and more information:
https://www.ebay.com/str/fitzbooksandwaffles
Theodore Weiss (1916–2003) was a poet, critic, professor of poetry at Princeton University, and editor, with his wife Renee (1924-2021), of the Quarterly Review of Literature. As a poet, Weiss was probably best known for his work, “Gunsight” (1962), which traces the experiences of a wounded US soldier fighting in WWII as he loses consciousness before undergoing surgery. His other books of poetry include The World Before Us: Poems, 1950-1970 (1970), Fireweeds (1976), Recoveries: A Poem (1982), A Slow Fuse: New Poems (1984) and A Sum of Destructions (1995). As a critic, Weiss was the author of a study of Shakespeare's early comedies and histories, The Breath of Clowns and Kings (1971), and The Man from Porlock: Engagements, 1944-1981 (1982). He was the editor of Selections from the Notebooks of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1945).
The Quarterly Review of Literature (QRL) was founded in 1943 by Warren Pendleton Carrier. Renee and Ted took it over in 1944 when Carrier entered the military. The QRL showcased emerging and major writers including William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, e.e. cummings, Thomas Merton, Mark Van Doren, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Eugenio Montale, and John Ashbery.
Renee and Ted Weiss were the center of a vibrant literary community. Their library bears witness to their many important friendships, and the critical role they played in the little magazine scene of the mid- and late-twentieth century.