I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
Cole Porter Song Book, The
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959. Item #06680
“For Leslie - from Cole”
A Choice Association Copy of The Cole Porter Song Book, Inscribed by Cole Porter to Leslie Bricusse
With the Original 1949 Time Magazine Featuring Porter
PORTER, Cole. The Cole Porter Song Book. The Complete Words and Music of Forty of Cole Porter’s Best Loved Songs. Foreword by Moss Hart. Illustrations by Robert J. Lee. Arrangements by Dr. Albert Sirmay. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
First edition. Large quarto (12 x 9 inches; 305 x 229 mm.). viii, 215 pp. Hidden spiral binding. Color pictorial endpapers.
Publisher’s original light blue linen over boards, decoratively stamped in pink and blue, spine lettered in gilt. A near fine copy, housed in the original color pictorial slipcase, very slightly worn at the extremities. An unusually well-preserved example of this notoriously fragile production.
Presentation & Provenance:
Inscribed by Cole Porter on the verso of the front free endpaper:
“New York / 26th April 1961 / For Leslie / from Cole.”
With Leslie Bricusse’s ownership signature beneath a printed “EX LIBRIS” bookplate - a generic design of a medieval king facing left.
With:
An original copy of Time magazine (January 31, 1949), featuring Cole Porter on the front cover and including the article “The Theater” (pp. 40–44).
A particularly elegant association between two giants of 20th-century popular song. Porter - the supreme stylist of Broadway sophistication - inscribes his definitive collected songbook to Bricusse, who would go on to become one of the most successful lyricists of the postwar era (Stop the World, Willy Wonka, Doctor Dolittle).
The date of inscription - 1961 - places this at a moment when Bricusse was just emerging internationally, lending the presentation a subtle sense of artistic continuity: one master acknowledging another at the threshold.
The Song Book itself is among the most visually distinctive American music publications of the period, designed to lie flat at the piano with its concealed spiral binding and animated mid-century illustrations.
Association copies of Porter’s works are scarce; those linking him directly to another major songwriter are exceptional.
Price: $4,500.00