WARREN, Robert Penn (1905-1989). World Enough and Time. A Romantic Novel. New York: Random House, 1950.

WARREN, Robert Penn (1905-1989). World Enough and Time. A Romantic Novel. New York: Random House, 1950.

8o. Original red and black cloth, gilt-lettered on front cover and spine (some light edgewear and soiling). Provenance: RANDALL JARRELL (1914-1965), American poet (presentation inscription).

FIRST EDITION. A FINE LITERARY ASSOCIATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY WARREN TO RANDALL AND MACKIE JARRELL on the front free endpaper: "To Randall & Mackie with my warmest regards Red Warren April 8, 1950." Mackie Jarrell was the poet's first wife.

Jarrell met Warren his freshman year at Vanderbilt, where he distinguished himself as one of Warren's students. Warren later recalled: "He was so gifted that he terrorized my bright group of sophomores, not out of malice but with the cruel innocence of a baby... He was already writing extraordinarily beautiful poems... He would [later] come out to my little whitewashed house and talk poetry and philosophy and brutally criticize my poems. I would listen carefully. He was often right and more often amusing, so amusing that it didn't matter much that it was at my expense" (quoted in Joseph Blotner, Robert Penn Warren: A Biography, NY 1997, p.123). Jarrell followed another Vanderbilt professor, John Crowe Ransom, to the Kenyon Review, though he remained in touch with Warren for the rest of his life. Grimshaw A10a(1).