8vo (152 x 115 mm). Manuscript and original illustrations on stiff accordion-folded card. Calligraphic title with teepee vignette drawn in ink and finished in gouache mounted to card; 8 FULL-PAGE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN IN INK AND FINISHED IN GOUACHE mounted to card; calligraphic initials and original illustrated end-pieces; small devices drawn in ink and finished in gouache mounted to card; all to accompany the calligraphic text of Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. (Some minor staining.) Stab-sewn into gray paper wrappers, small central portrait onlaid to front cover, gold-painted endleaves with orange stag decorations (lacking one tie, chipping). 

CALLIGRAPHIC MANUSCRIPT OF WARD'S FIRST -- AND UNPUBLISHED -- BOOK

AB Bookman's Weekly describes the manuscript: "What might be considered Ward's first--and unpublished--book was his calligraphic and illustrated manuscript of 'Song of Hiawatha,' apparently done by Ward while a college student, ca. 1923. Ward hand-sewed it in wrappers after neatly writing the text on five and one half pages and embellishing it with 8 full-page color drawings, each 3-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches" (Vol. 102, 1998, p.553).

In 1928, Ward earned his first commission, illustrating Dorothy Rowe's The Begging Deer: And Other Stories of Japanese Children with eight full-page watercolor and forty-two ink and brush drawings. His first work, Gods' Man, a woodcut novel of his own, was published by Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith in October 1929, the week before the Wall Street Crash. His work has been an important influence on graphic artists, and in 2011, his name has been attached to the prestigious annual Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, sponsored by Penn State University Libraries and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book at the US Library of Congress.