WHYTE'S THE ECLECTIC COLLECTOR SATURDAY & SUNDAY 25 & 26 July 2020

293 Literature THE ECLECTIC COLLECTOR · 25 & 26 JULY 2020 623 1953 (13 January) Poetry Society of America gold medal to Oliver St. John Gogarty. 14 carat gold medal - The Alexander Droutzkoy Memorial Award (for outstanding service to Poetry). 30mm diameter, with ribbon and gold laurel branch. Condition: Very fine. Other winners of Poetry Society medals include Robert Graves, Robert Frost and Carl Sandberg. In 1939 Gogarty, who was an enthusiastic and talented amateur aviator, attempted to enlist in the RAF and the RAMC as a doctor. He was denied on grounds of age. He then departed for an extended lecture tour in the United States. When his return to Ireland was delayed by the war, Gogarty applied for American citizenship, and eventually decided to reside permanently in the United States. His primary American residence was in New York. Feeling that he was too old to sit for the medical examinations that would have qualified him as a practitioner in the United States, Gogarty instead chose to support himself entirely by his writing. In addition to various essays and short stories, his prose output included Going Native, a satire on English social mores, Mad Grandeur and Mr. Petunia, two period narratives composed with an eye to having them optioned as Hollywood films, and Rolling Down the Lea and It Isn’t This Time of Year at All!, two loosely constructed memoirs. He also published two books of poems, Perennial and Unselected Poems; a collection of bawdy verse, The Merry Muses of Hibernia, was planned but never completed. Gogarty died on 22 September 1957; his body was flown home to Ireland and buried in Moyard, near Renvyle. Estimate €3000-€5000 (approx £2,730-£4,550) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot 623