Lindsay, Vachel

The Art of the Moving Picture. New York: Macmillan, 1922

8vo (7 1/2 x 5 ins; 190 x 130 mm). Publisher's pictorial cloth; rubbed and faded, spine ends repaired, hinges reinforced.  Custom half morocco slipcase.

The first book to take motion pictures seriously as art, it remains a key work of American film aesthetics, with a full page autograph poem . Lindsay presents the volume to "Miss Katherine Latham and with the hope she will completely revolutionize America with this modest little book..."  in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1923.  On the front pastedown he writes in part: "A Poem - such as it is, absolutely improvised... Go little book and bring to all | Kalidoscopes, and microscopes | and telescopes and fantastical hopes | let down from the sky by cobweb ropes | and bring to all — |  art in the pantry and in the front hall ..."